the impact of aristotle's scientific ideas in the middle ages and at the beginning of the scientific...

8/10/2019 The Impact of Aristotle's Scientific Ideas in the Middle Ages and at the Beginning of the Scientific Revolution

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The Impact of Aristotle s Scientific Ideas in the MiddleAges and at the Beginning of the Scientific Revolution

by Ingemar Du r ing (Gteborg) 1

Aristotle s Scientific ideas were not fully understood until hiswritings were available in Greek in the sixteenth Century and untilEuropean scholars knew enough Greek to be able to grasp the basicideas behind the words. Allowing us a certain simplification, we can

say that Aristotle s Scientific ideas were transmitted to the MiddleAges in two main currents, one with its origin in Hellenistic doxo-graphy, Cicero and Pliny, the other with its origin in the Romanedition of the Corpus Aristotelicum, made by Andronicus of Rhodessorne years after Cicero s death, and the paraphrases made duringthe first Century of our era. The Latin tradition is a rather t hintrickle, conveying little of Aristotle s basic scientific thought. Butwhat men like Cicero Pliny and Augustine said about Aristotle had,of course, always a great influence on the Latin tradition. Cicero

knew little about Aristotle s physics and cosmology. Pliny wasuncritical. As A. Steier 2 shows, Pliny accepted without objectionmany of the gross mistakes made by Aristotle. He was a diligentCompiler and his principle was prodenda quia prod ita sunt His mindwas utilitarian; he also swallowed all kinds of magic and supersti-tion. His favourite idea was to show that nature and everythingbrought into being by nature existed to serve the purpose of man.His mind was not that of a scientist and consequently he had nointerest in the basic theories of Aristotle, although it is quite clear

that he had a good first-hand knowledge for instance of Aristotle s e Partibus Animalium Yet Pliny s Historia Naturalis served stextbook in natural science until the sixteenth Century. We cannotreally wonder that the early mediaeval scholars who relied mainlyon the Latin tradition, preserved in the compilations of the Latinencyclopaedists, knew n ext t o nothing about Aristotle s scientificmethods and ideas.

1 Although not a mediaevalist I have, in honour of my friend Paul W i l p r r t, v o n l mcd to offer thcsc rather sketchy rcinarks on a vast themo.

2 Zoologische Probleme bei Aristoteles und Plinius , Zoologische nnalrn f> ( 1 M H )207305.

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The Impact of Aristotle's Scicntific Idcas in the M idd le Ages 117

his contemporaries he was rightly called nostri temporis stu-por .

Towards the middle of the thirteenth Century four channels oftransmission of Greek science

were open: the Latin tradition pre-

served by the cathedral schools; the earliest Latin translations fromArabic and Greek made in Sicily, Venice and Toledo in the twelfthCentury; later and better translations, for instance those made byWilliam of Moerbeke; they too are, however, word-for-wordtranslations and personally I find it difficult to see how a mediaevalscholar, using these literal translations, could grasp the ideas thatAristotle wanted to convey to him; finally, and for instance forAlbert Magnus extremely important, a large number of translations

of Arabic commentators, Avicenna, Averroes, Alpetragius andothers, and of Arabic compilations circulating under Aristotle'sname, including a number of pseudo-Aristotelian writings.

We know that this flood of new books kindled a new enthusiasm.The result was an upsurge of intellectual activity and the rise of anew professional interest in philosophy, the ultimate result of whichwas the unification of European thought and the intellectual leader-ship of the Latin West.

Behind this revival of learning looms the great figure of Aristotle,

but, indeed, a Protean Aristotle. From Grosseteste (11751253) toGalileo Galilei 15641642) Aristotle occupied the centre of thestage. But this Aristotle has but little in common with the trueAristotle, the problem-thinker, the seeker for truth. We know verylittle about the books on which Robert Grosseteste, or a Centurylater, Nicolas Oresme, relied for their knowledge about Aristotle,but one thing is certain: they did not know him first-hand. Greekbooks and Greek instruction were rare exceptions during theMiddle Ages. Every great thinker constructed his own image of

Aristotle; this sham-Aristotle was regarded s a final authority,but at the same time he provided the weapons with which he wasattacked, and the schoolmen won their battles in fighting withthis .

Recent investigation has proved false th e idea that the age of theschoolmen was merely receptive and that the main achicvement ofthis age was the absorption of the Greco-Arabic t radit ion. The

die Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaften auf der von Albert eingeschlagenen

Bahn weitergegangen, so w re ihr ein Umweg von drei Jahrhunderten erspart

geblieben . M y study of A lbert s zoological wrilings confinns his view.




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p o n d t i l u m has novv s w u n g to the o the r extreme; the interest i s no wfocussed on the original c o n t r i b u i i o n s of the thirtecnth ancl four-t e en t h C e n t u r y thinkers.

Broadly speakingI t h i n k we ean still maintain that the Greco-Arabie tracli t ion transmitted to the West was a coherent System o fsc ient i f ic ideas; the closeness of this System helped to preserve it,especially after it had been digested and fu r ther systematized intextbooks for the universities. At the average level, professors andstudents used the same basic textbooks during f ou r centuries, andthe \vorld-view propagated in these books was ultimately based onAristotelian cosmology: a good example is the textbook in astron-omy written about 1225 by John H o l y w o o d latinized Sacrobosco,used in all universities until after Galileo's time, after 1470 knownin some 250 printed editions. But if we study the great individualt h inkers o f these centuries, the picture changes: none of them accept-ed the same system of ideas. What unites them is, s P. O. Kristellerhas said, the use of a common source material, a common terminol-ogy a common set of definitions and problems, a common method ofdiscussing these problems. For this F. van Steenberghen has coinedthe suitable term ,,an eclectic Aristotelianism .

As is well known, the Church intervened many times during thisCentury and prohibited the study of certain of Aristotle's works.The interventions are sometimes regarded s attacks on the freedomof thought. Here, again, modern investigation has shed new ligth.Thanks to a treatise by Boetius of Dacia we now know much moreabout the radical and heterodox Aristotelianism, represented bySiger of Brabant, the so-called Latin Averroism. The Church foughtagainst d ifferent fo rms of the new Aristotelianism, because theconservative theologians did not want to sacrifice their belief inGod Almighty w ho can do with the world s it pleases Hirn. Tothem the Aristotelian rationalism appeared s an impious attemptto infringe God's omnipotence by pledging Hirn to obey the lawsof nature and necessity. The Church did not persecute the greatthinkers but took a firm position against the rationalism which,relying on Aristotle, advocated the supremacy of the intellect.R. Hooykaas has shown that this f ight of the Church which cul-minated in Bishop Tempier's indictment from the year 1277, actu-ally furthered the advancement of science. In the fourteenthCentury again, the philosophy of nature inspired by the Occamist

school at Paris and Oxford attacked the scholastic Aristotelianismfrom another angle. And during the whole period the followers of




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The Impact of Aristotle s Scicntific Ideas in thc Middle Ages 9

Averroes and of Siger of Brabant fought against the Church,belieying themselves to be the only true Champions for the freedomof science. The Situation is thus extremely complicated: the Church

allowed freedom of thought, provided that the dogmas of Christianfaith were left untouched, but fought against the philosophers. Ina way, then, the dogmatic Aristotelianism of the university philos-ophers was a greater danger for the advancement of science thanthe Church.

As an example illustrating what happened when a great thinkerabout 1200 struggled to understand Aristotle and formulate hisown views I shall take Robert Grosseteste, on whom Dr. Crombie 4

has published a penetrating study. According to Crombie, Grosse-

teste created a new scientific method, unknown to the Greeks. Theexperimental science, usually regarded s a result of the scientificrevolution in Galileo s time , was according to Crombie in fact acreation of Grosseteste and the Oxford school. Two factors madethis achievement possible: firstly, the remarkable advancement oftechnical skill and practical knowledge which encouraged experi-ments and developed a new interest in practical scientific problems.Early in the thirteenth Century this practical tendency began toaffect the teaching of the seven liberal arts Even those writers who

approached technics and science s literary men, recognized intheory that natural science rests on a basis of experience. Thesecond factor is of course the impact of the new knowledge ofAristotle. Grosseteste s contribution still according to Crombie was to unite the two twelfth Century traditions of technology andlogic, and to produce a methodus experimentalis by which the worldof experience could be investigated and rationally explained. Athorough examination of Grosseteste s commentaries on Aristotleshows how he transformed Aristotle s deductive and geometrical

science into a science based on induction and experiment. The twofundamental concepts in this new method was the doctrinc ofresolutio and compositio that is, the use of both induction anddeduction in order to reach an exact Interpretation of naturalphenomena; the proposition which comes out s a result of thisOperation should be tested by verification or falsification. Crombicthen goes on to show how Grosseteste appliod this method inclealing with various scientific problems.

This is a good example of thc new tro nd in appraisiiitf thc a ch i ev c

ment of the twelfth and th irteenth Century scholars. Crombii s niain4 l {ober Irossftrste and th e Origiiis of Kxpcrimcntal Stirn O x f o r d 1 W > . l




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thesis arouses, however, some misgivings: it isfor me difficult to seein w h a t rcspect Grosseteste surpassed Aristotle. Crombie providesthe reader with ample material which in fact disproves his thesis.Aristotle h ad recognized in principle the necessity for experimentalverification and falsification. As far s we know he made little useof i t in practice. Are we t o believe that Grosseteste really appliedt hose principles better than Aristotle ? I am afraid the ans wer rnustbe 110 for in clealing with Grosseteste's theory of refraction Crombieteils us that Grosseteste did not even attempt to verify it by ex-periments: he was a methodologist rather than an experimental-ist. It is true that Grosseteste sometimes discusses the methodsof science in a spirit which foreshadows the subsequent develop-ment, but it is difficult to admit that his ideas were in any wayrevolutionary.

That Roger Bacon was greatly influenced by Grosseteste is un-questionable but what he actually meant with his scientia experimentalis remains doubtful; he uses alternatively the two wordsexperimentum and experientia: it seems to me probable that whathe had in mind was the Workshop the mechanical arts, and theusefulness of practical experience, not scientific experiments sthose made by Stevin and Galileo in the seventeenth Century. It isonly in their new attitude to practical problems of applied sciencethat Grosseteste and Bacon foreshadow the future revolution in theapproach to scientific problems. In their discussions of method Icannot see that they went beyond Aristotle, but their attitude tothe professions is something quite new.

Aristotle made a sharp distinction between the philosopher andthe practitioner. The mediaeval attitude is in principle the same.The mediaeval practitioner was for many centuries a simple crafts-man: the distinguished doctor did not soil his hands with blood;the philosopher contemplated the musica mundana and wroteerudite treatises on harmonics, but would never dream of touchingan Instrument; in natural science, the study of any other branchthan theoretical astronomy (that is, cosmology) and especially ofexperimental natural science was regarded s belonging to theblack arts. Dante placed those who dedicated themselves to thatkind of study in Hell.

The attempts of the schoolmen to understand Aristotle hasrightly been called a titanic failure , a failure not only to under-stand his scientific ideas and concepts, but also a failure to formulatea philosophy of their own: they f ound themselves in a blind alley.

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The Impact of Aristotlc s Scientific Ideas in thc Middle Ages 121

It is a fact, often overlooked, that many of Aristotle s funda-mental scientific ideas were never understood during the manu-script age, not even in Antiquity when the Greek texts were

available. I shall illustrate this with the following example.Aristotle did not only record observations or propo und scientifictheories in general terms; at the same time he offered a detailedaccount of the mechanism by which he thought the observedphenomena came about. He did not consider t sufficient to develophis theory of form embodied in matter*. But he explained preciselyhow he thought this embodiment was effected. Like many o fAristotle s fundamental ideas his theory o f form embodied in matterand separable from it only in thought, has its roots in his biological

view and approach to problems. The question he raised was this:a corpse has the same shape and fashion s a living body, and yetit is not a man. A hand constituted in any and every manner likea living hand, for instance a bronze or wooden one, is not a handexcept in name; the same applies to a physician painted on canvas,or a flute carved in stone. What is the essence and character of theanimal itself, and how are we to find out its form () ?

Aristotle s answer is this: the , the connatepneuma, is the primary vehicle of life and of the processes peculiar

to living organisms. The pneuma is certainly corporeal, a kind ofmatter, present in the animal from the moment of conception, andso long s the animal remains alive. It is connate, not acquired fromoutside, and it is the vehicle of the soul. In his physics its analogenis the first body , , the substance out of which thecelestial spheres and the heavenly bodies are made. In materialobjects, whether made by art or found in nature, its analogen is theimmanent Form, 5 .

It is interesting to follow how this concept of pneuma underwentsuccessive changes during the process of transmission. Aristotle sconnate pneuma is an important factor in his Solutions to theproblems of reproduction and Sensation, but it must be admittedthat his account of its function is obscure and even inconsistent. 6The Stoics adopted the concept o f pneuma, but in their philosophyits connexion with observed facts is omitted: it is a rather vagucconcept, at once the matter from which all things have original cdand an all-pervading world-reason; the Stoics proservod the6 See my Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines I> nkrns.

1900. p. 342346.




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Ari s to t r l i an tonn aiul characterized thc soul itself s >. This concept, perhaps because of its vagueness, madc astrong appcal. Galen makcs extensive use of the idea of pneuma,i i iul f roin his writings it reached the Arabs; it was incorporated inthe Corpus of Galenic Writings and in Avicenna's Canon. Parts oft his Corpus were translated by Constantine the African and throughthe Masters of Salerno transmitted to the Latin West; the completetrunslation was made by Gerard of Cremona in Toledo; this largecorpus and Avicenna's Canon served s medical textbooks for manyccnturies; the idea of pneuma remained in fact a basic conceptuntil the later part of the 18 th Century.

But Galen's pneuma, again, was something quite different frornwhat Aristotle had taught and also different frorn the Stoicalpneuma. According to Galen, the pneuma enters the body with theair passes to the heart, where it combines with another kind ofpneuma, extracted by the liver from the chyle, forming the vitalspirit, . In Galen's explanation of the process ofreproduction, no reference is made to this concept. It is purespeculation, and it was easy to refute s such.

Another Interpretation of the pneuma, which through theHermetic philosophy became very influential, is a curious blend ofAristotle's connate pneuma and the corresponding Stoical concept.As in Aristotle, the pneuma is compared with the nowcalled the f if th element, and it is now almost identified with it; it isalso identified with the Aristotelian $, the notion of the imma-nent form; in short, it is now thought of s the active principle inall things. This concept of pneuma had a powerful influence inmoulding the ideas of the alchemists. The Book of the Fifth Natureby J bir ibn Hay n, transmitted these ideas to the Arabs. Themost celebrated Western counterpart to this book is Ramon Lull'streatise De secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia. LulTs very clearaccount of what he meant by quintessence shows us to what extentan Aristotelian concept could be distorted.

This brief survey shows that no one of those who adoptedAristotle's technical expression understood the idea behind theword. This has happened many times during the transmission ofAristotle's scientific ideas. Many of his most profound ideas areformulated in one or two words: those who hit upon those words

6

Chrysippus, S V II 885. He probably means that is identicalwith or a prerequisite for life.




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diel not always investigate their background. Take for instance hisword , a word which in the last Century owes to Drieschits bad reputation; or take Aristotle's definition of time s , the foundation of hiskinematics and that which most of all distinguishes his theory oftime frorn Plato's in the Timaeus To understand technical expres-sions of this kind it is necessary to follow Aristotle's own principleof , to attempt a comprehensive explana-tion of a whole complex of related phenomena. Isolated and takenout of their context these words give little or no sense.

The first, s far s I can see, to understand completely Aristotle'stheory of form embodied in matter and of the ,

was William Harvey: with his work On the eneration of Animals

he founded modern embryology. Aristotle had clearly recognizedthe fundamental problems of biology: sex, heredity, nutrition,growth, adaptation, the scala naturae, the theory of epigenesis andso forth. It happens still to-day when a new discovery is made thatscientists look up old Aristotle in order to see if he has observed thefact. Just one example: Professor Haldane 7 tried to show thatAristotle probably has recorded an observation of bees' dances, themethod by which hive bees communicate with one another.

As a biologist Aristotle is first and foremost philosopher, notscientist in our sense of the word. His biology is a philosophicalbiology. As observer of nature he makes many good observations,but he is also guilty of errors of far-reaching influence, for instancehis denial of the sexuality of plants, or his assignation of the hearts the seat of intelligence, in spite of earlier Hippocratic views.

Almost all of Aristotle's main ideas in the field of biology wereforgotten within a generation after his death. Pliny became thegreat authority during 1500 years. It took the combined efforts ofthe best Renaissance naturalists to drive

him out, or at

least to

lessen the evil he had done. It is true that Galen was greatly in-fluenced by Aristotle, but his two main ancient authorities were'Hippocrates' and Plato's Timaeus and many of his doctrines werepurely speculative (I have already given one example). Galen'stheory that the human body is governed physiologically by threedistinct and graded sets of organs, fluids and pneumata, and bistheory of the 'innate forces of the body', the \'$.7 Aristotle's account of bee's clanrcs , .///.S 75 (1055) M 2 f > -ordinj? t > m a n v

oppononts not plausible; I too doubt that Haldano's interptvlalion is valid




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are examplcs o f this type o f speculative amalgamation o f ancienticloas. I n thc th i r leen thCen turyrcv iva lAlbert Magnusisanexception.As l have said above he was an excellent observer of facts, with af i n e unders tanding o f morphology and ecology, unsurpassed sinceTlioophrastus but he was less interested in ideas, and he had nofol lowers. W. Pagel h s made a pertinent observation concerningth e tvvo main currents o f mediaeval intellectual life: Aristotelianrat ionalism usually allied with theological scholasticism, wasanti-scientific whereas experimental empiricism, reacting againstthis intellectualism f o u n d an ally in mysticism. The empiricalattitude, so con imon in the professions, gradually resulted in aremarkable development of technique and industry; in the Schools,o n the other hand, the religious climate fostered an interest in logicand abstruse speculation. In a most interesting way the w ocurrents met in the writings of Francis Bacon. As a young precociousboy in Trinity College he developed his distaste for the scholasticAristotle; themainpointinhis criticism o f the Aristotelian philosophywas that it concerned itself with a small rnge of problems; thehorizon was limited; again we are reminded of the narrowness ofthe scholastic Aristotelianism by contrast to the true Aristotle. Inhis brilliant book dvancement of Learning he forecast visions o fthe new knowledge within reach of man. He wanted to bring about the true and law ful marriage of the empirical and rational faculties,the unkind and ill-starred Separation of which has thrown intoconfusion all the affairs of the human family. For when philosophyis severed f rom its root in experience, whence it first sprouted andgrew, it becomes a dead thing .

Tirades of this kind, which are numerous in Bacon's works, areof course not directed against the real Aristotle, w h o m Baconsimply did not know, but against the sham-Aristotle of the school-men. Bacon's own biology is fll of belief in magic and time-wornlegend, more akin to Pliny than to Aristotle and this in spiteof his demand for an absolute regeneration of science . Nor isthere in my opinion anything real novel in his logic or in his rules ofinduction.

Aristotle's biologic concepts were rediscovered towards the endof the 16th Cen tury. William Harvey feit himself deeply indebted toAristotle, and, what is more, he had really penetrated the depths ofhis thought: The authority of Aristotle has always such weightwith me that I never think of diff erring with him inconsiderately.




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It is the last word in this scntence that makes the whole differencein attitude.

Even in those branches of learning in which the scholars of the

Middle Ages were specialists we meet a profound misunderstandingof Aristotle's thought. Here I must take an example from Aristotle'sso-called metaphysics, which few, if any, seientists today regard sa legitimate branch of science, preferring to speak of laws, hypo-theses, and using other terms. I have the highest respect for ThomasAquinas s an outstanding scholar in his own right. But I cannotside with those who hold that Thomas understood and interpretedAristotle in a way which is still valid for us who have access to theoriginal Greek texts.

According to Aristotle the ultimate aim of scientific thinking isto discover the enduring and intelligible reality behind the chang-ing phenomena perceived through the senses: he wanted to definewhat he called the , that is the existence of things, underlyingand causing all observed facts. To his mind the worid, its materialthings, its living organisms, its Spiritual phenomena, was one andthe same reality. Some aspects of this reality might be revealed byphysics or natural science, others by mathematics, others again bywhat Aristotle called philosophy of first things and we call meta-

physics. The different branches of science, the , wereconceived of s roads leading to truth, ,and the discussion of these 'roads' or is constantly carriedon parallel with the account of concrete investigation.

The concept of a unified Cosmos in which Spiritual and materialphenomena differ only s the concave and convex sides of a sphere,and of a unified science without the modern cleavage between thehumanities and the sciences dominated the teaching in the Euro-pean universities until the middle of the seventeenth Century.During this time the question guiding scientific inquiry was essen-tially the same s it had been to Aristotle. A natural consequcnceof this is, for instance, that Aristotle's biology and physics areinterwoven with metaphysical and ontological spcculation. Al-though he himself says so he never clearly distinguished descriptivenatural science, , from the inquiry into the causes andessence of things, the . His leading idca was that naturodoes nothing in vain . Perhaps the modern biologist is right, whosaid: Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can l ive; yethe is ashamed to show himself in public with her. Aristotle wasnot ashamed; on the contrary, he was never content to ask Wlia t




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is i t ? , b u t imnuid ia te ly raisccl the quest ion Why . To mostsciont is ts t o d n y th is is rcpel lent : the wliole method is regarded sobsolete and unsciei i t i f ic . Whcther this tw en t ie th Century attitudeis r i t h t or w ron g I shall leave asidc: w hat I want to stress is that asystoin of thought bascd on teleology and on the pre-Cartesianoonception of a uni f ied Cosmos becomes intelligible only i f we under-s tand the quest ions it was designed to ariswer.

To i l lustrate my point I shall select one of the fundamentalconcepts of mediaeval philosophy, the socalled analogia entis.T h o m as A q u i n a s based his doctrine on Aristotle's doctrine of in Metaphysics Gamma 2 one of the most profound chapters in thiscollection of lectures on the 'philosophy of first things'.

Aristotle says s follows: The world s the order of many can,when we try to analyse it, be divided in various ways. We candetach parts of it ancl study them separately, for instance an animalor a star. We can also divide the phenomena according to anotherprinciple: we can detach, s it were, layers from reality and makearithmetic, geometry, dynamics deal with things so far s they arecountable, spatial, or moving in space, and so forth. But Being splain Existence cannot be detached or cut. Substantiality is awhole of instrumental momenta which cannot be separated. Hisconclusion is: Existence itself is analogous in all beings 8. Existenceis nothing self-existent, but the actual presence of the form of athing here and now. Unity, definiteness, and existence are correla-tive notions. The notions beloiiging to the concept existence areTrpos , that is, they refer to one and the same nature. Thereare no things that are matter without fo rm , or form without matter.

In his account of the doctrine of this chapter Thomas invertedthe meaning. He replaced the Aristotelian by God, andchanged immanence into transcendence. And this he gave out sAristotle's doctrine. This doctrine, supposed to be Aristotle's, wasfor centuries the object of dispute and discussion. But s far s Iknow, no mediaeval scholar used the simple method which anyscholar would use today, namely to check his quotations and hisInterpretation. The reason for this is simple: Greek texts werescarce; if available, few, if any, could understand them; the Latintranslations were very un satisf actory, the language vague, especiallyin texts of this subtle kind.

3 Met. Eta I 2 1043 a 5. See my Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seinesDenkens. Heidelberg 1966, p. 619.




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The first weU-known scholar to raise his voice against the scho-lastic misrepreiitation of Aristotle was Petrarch; the battle-crywas Aristotle is better than his translators . But with him startedthe rebellion against Aristotle; really good translations from Greekto Latin were first made by the Renaissance scholars; the impor-tance of this fact has in my opinion not yet been sufficientlyappreciated. I agree entirely with P. O. Kristeller 9 that we haveto reconsider our view of the Renaissance Aristotelianism. It isgenerally believed that the upsurge of science in the beginning ofthe seventeenth Century was inspired by a reaction towards Aristotleand a renewed interest in Plato; this view can no loiiger be main-tained without considerable modifications. The transmission ofAristotle's scientific ideas to the Latin West was not completeduntil the first half of the seventeenth Century.

We can illustrate this by returning to our example, the Interpre-tation of the so-called analogia entis. In the sixteenth Century,when good texts and good translations were available, this doctrinewas well understood. Jean Fernel, in his Dialogue on the HiddenCaiises of Things a very popul r book published in 1548 and re-printed in many European countries during onehundredandfiftyyears, gives an account of Aristotle's doctrine which comes veryclose to the original. He recognized the interrelation betweenAristotle's notions of pneuma, (form), and . In hispreface he gives us the reason: We have recovered the true textsof the masterpieces of Greek wisdom; learning and the fine artsare blooming afresh after a frost of thirteenth centuries. At thesame time it is characteristic that Fernel avoids the word 'sub-stance'. He, like many philosophers today, associated this wordwith the unfruitful speculation of the schoolmen: referring toAristotle's classical metaphor, Nature works on matter, s thesculptor works on bronze , he substituted the word 'nature'. Thisis what he says: Each animal and plant, each mineral, whateveris in this sublunary world, contains a particular iiialterable nature,which maintains and Orders it and its kind and combines the wholeto a universal nature. This particular nature is its form and truebeing, and it is form coming to the material which makes i t theindividual thing that it is.

For Fernel 'form' was substantial over and above the elcmentalmatter. Although inseparable from the individual thing, it was.

he Classics and Renaissance hougtot Ma r t i n Classical 1-crtiircs vol. X V ) ,Harvard UP 1965 p. 34.




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B r i n g a c t t i a l l y scparablc . Tl i is comes very close to Aristotle sv i c w c o n v c t l y in t r rp rc i ted by thc Grcek commentators, fromA l e x a n d e r of Aphrod i s i a s to Ph i loponus . T he Arabs d id not under-s t a iu l t h i s doc.tr im a n d madc form a n d substance to qualitics a n dpropcr t ics . Through Aver rocs this doctrine was transmitted to theLa t in \\Vst and persisted for centurics s a materialistic Interpre-t a t ion of A r i s to t l e in compet i t ion wi th the Thomistic doctrine.

When we look back at the period from 1200 to 1500 we arei nc l i nc d to regard it s entirely dominated by the f igure of Aristotle.In schools and universities he is the authority; in the populrl i t e ra tu re and in art we meet the so-caUed Legend of Aristotle, acurious mixture of Oriental, Greek an d European fiction; manualsin social behaviour for princes and noblemen w ere edited s worksof Ar is to t le ; pseudo-Aristotelian writiiigs provided an arsenal forthe black arts. Great individuals, of course, introduced new ideas.W e may recall the names of Jean Buridan, Nicolas Oresme, Nicolasof Cusa Regiomontanus. But recent estimates of their work sforerunners of a scientific revival serve rather to emphasize thecontinuity of thought than to indicate a break with the past. Theimpetus-theorists, for instance, were only a minority movement,and so was the Occamist school. Their doctrines becarne knownonly to a small circle. The relative scarcity of books during themanuscript age and the limited Communications between scholarsdelayed real advancement. The Situation changed drastically fromabout 1450. According to Sarton the Veiietian printers aloneproduced about two million printed volumes in the 15th Century 10 ;this is hard t o believe, but the f igure given shows how quickly theSituation must have changed. The multiplicity and cheapness ofbooks, the introduction of Standard texts and Standard illustrationsto which one could easily refer the importance of these materialfac t s can hardly be exaggerated.

But, essentially, the conception of the world remained unchanged:tw o passages in Galileo s famous Dialogiie oncern ing the Two hief World Systems teil us why. There are three Speakers, Salviati,representing Galileo himself Simplicio, the intelligent Aristotelian,and Sagredo, the educated layman.

10 In the Convento de Santa Monica in Puebla, M exico I saw in 1947 vast and dustypiles of incunabula and early sixteenth Century books, printed in Venice andHolland, obviously shipped to Mexico in the early sixteenth Century. The Uni-versity of Mexico was founded in 1551.




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The Iinpact of Aristotlc's Scicntific Idcas in the Middlc Agcs 129

Salviati says s follows: It is vanity to imagine that one canintroduce a new philosophy merely by refuting this or that author.It is necessary first to teach the reform of the human mind and to

reiider it capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.In these words we suddenly hear a new accent, famili r toeverybody who has read Plato 11 and Aristotle. But during almosttwo thousand years, between Aristotle and Galileo, nobody saidanything like this. Again we realize that a creative thinker can beenthroned only by another creative thinker, not merely by negativecriticism.

The second passage is this: When Salviati has expounded thenew discoveries of sun-spots, comets and so forth, Simplicio first

does not answer. Sagredo then says: I can see that Simplicio isdeeply moved by the overwhelming force of these arguments, and Iseem to hear him say: Who would there be to settle our contro-versies, if Aristotle were to be deposed? What other authorityshould we follow in the Schools, the Academies, the Universities ?Which philosopher has written the whole of natural philosophy, sowell arranged, without omitting a single conclusion ? Ought we todesert that structure on which so many travellers have recuperated ?Should we destroy that haven, that Prytaneum where so many

scholars have taken refuge so comfortably; where, without ex-posing themselves to the inclemencies of the air, they can acquire acomplete knowledge of the universe by merely turning a few pages ?Should that fort be levelled, where one may abide in safety againstall enemy assaults?

Another example I shall take from the correspondence betweenLeibniz and his teacher Jakob Thomasius about 1670. The scientificrevolution is now a fact: In a letter to his old friend Leibniz teilshim about the new books he has received from the Royal Society,

and about the new philosophy which is now forming: Such aphilosophy, he says, will by no means imply a break with Aristotle.For most scholars now agree that during the age of the schoolmenAristotle has been obscured by clouds of smoke and that the realAristotle is in remarkable agreement with Galileo, Bacon, G assendi,Hobbes, Cartesius and Digby 12 . The Greek commentators iriter-preted him, on the whole, correctly, but the schoolmen di st rt dhis doctrines. When now our m inds have been cnlightened, philos-

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ophrrs prooord a long main roads: one foolish, s for instanceParacvlsiis; o n i audacious, s for instance Cartesius who rejccts v r n t In ronvct op in ions of Ihc ancionts ; the third road is the best;t hosr who follow this roacl admirc Aristotlc s a brilliant thinkcrwho is niostly r ight , although we have advanced further.Thomasiusreply is a moving document: the old professor con-gra tulat i s his young brilliant disciple on being fortunate enough tolivr and vvork in an age in which philosophy undergoes a completechange and concludes: I spent my apprentice years in the OldAgf (he was born 1022), and I worked my way up to a certainStandard of education. I am now too old to start from the begin-ning again. A llow me, my young friend, to stay where I am, shelteredby the entrenchments, like an old cautious Veteran.

'To start from the beginning.' That is exactly what Galileo,Drscartes and the other innovators did. But they were educated inthe Old Age and they were steeped in ancient literature. In thehistory of the transmission of Aristotle's scientific ideas this is thelast time that his writings played a conspicuous part in fermentingEuropean thought. It is true that in our Century there are signs ofincreased interest in certain of Aristotle's writings from professionalphilosophers, especially in ethics (G. E. Moore), logic and semantics(G. Ryle, A. J. Ayre, and others). But it would be an exaggerationto speak of a revival.

It has often been maintained that Galileo became the father ofmodern science by replacing the speculative method with theempirical, experimental method. We know now that this is nottrue. Aristotle's basic scientific ideas are based on a common senseappraisal of the reality surrounding him. This is one of the reasonswhy it was so difficult to overthrow his idea of the universe and theprocess of nature. It became possible only by a quite new approach,

by bold speculation along new avenues, by substituting entirelynew , new starting-points of thought, or s we use to say,new fundamental principles. Galileo rejected Aristotle's theory ofthe earth s a centre of the universe. By his experiments he askednature whether this hypothesis was sound. It was with this newapproach to the problem of motion that Aristotle's explanation ofmotion and rest definitely feil to the ground. It is, however, curious tonote that Galileo did not reject Aristotle's theory of circular uniformmovement, although he knew that Kepler had determined the true

orbits of the planets. So strong is the power of prejudice even in agreat thinker.


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The Impact of Aristotle's Scientific Idcas in the Middle Ages 3

In bis foreword to Drake's translation of Galileo's ialogueEinstein makes a pertinent remark. He finds that a close analogyexists between Galileo's rejection of Aristotle's hypothesis of acentre of the universe for explaining the fall of heavy bodies andthe rejection of Newton's hypothesis of an inertial System for theexplanation of the inertial behaviour of matter, which is the basisof the theory of general relativity.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth Century then, for the firsttime, Aristotle's basic scientific ideas were understood and correctlyinterpreted. The great scholars of this period testify to the Stimulusthey received from reading his works. Aristotle suggested to themlong-forgotten types of inquiry and disclosed a wider horizon than

that known to the mediaeval philosopher. Men like Galileo andHarvey saw in Aristotle a kindred mind: another episode in Gali-leo's ialogue well illustrates my point:

Salviati says that Aristotle's theory of the heart has recently beenproved false by anatomical dissection, and he describes the scenein Venice. Turning to a gentleman whom he knew to be an Aristo-telian philosopher, the doctor asked whether he was at last satisfiedand convinced that the nerves originate in the brain and not in theheart. The philosopher answered: You have made me see thismatter so plainly and palpably that if Aristotle's text were notcontrary to it, stating clearly that the nerves originate in the heart,I should be forced to admit it to be true. Then Salviati says: Here you can see how dangerous this authority of his ipse dixit is.It is the followers of Aristotle who have crowned him with authority,not he who has usurped or appropriated this to himself. If he hadbeen present at the dissection, do you not think he would haveapplauded the doctor, and been angry with this philosopher whocaed himself a Peripatetic ? Do you not think that Aristotle wouldhave used the telescope if he had known it ? Do you not know thatAristotle said that those who deny the evidence of their sensesought t o be deprived of them ?

Descartes, a mathematical mind was of course more inspired byPlato than by Aristotle. But in his writings, too, we find a stronginfluence from Aristotle, perhaps unconscious to him. Very un-Arislo-telian is his attitude to his predecessors: The prevailing confusionin the sciences arose from the fact that they have been built up bymany people over a long period of time. Tliere is usually no order

arid no plan in houses built by succcssive generations in contra-distinction to those that are thc work of one man. Tho best thing to




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is inake a clean sweep and begin anew, rclying on purereasoa.

Aristo o too, ralsccl new and revolutionary questions, but hediffonvd from Decartes in acknowiedging thc principle of :

No one is alone able to hit witli precision the parts of the truth hewants to hit, bui ihe small results attaincd by each thinker maketogether gradually a considerable total'' 13 . That is why Aristotleintroduced the historico-critical method: he invariably opens aciiscussion of a new problem with a critical review of his predeces-sors.

The rational optimism is the same in Aristotle and Descartes Because everything that can fall under human knowledge formsa sequence, and, so long s we avoid accepting s true what is notso, and always preserve the right order of deduction of one thingfrom another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in theend or too well hidden not to be discovered. The words are Des-cartes', but we often meet the same stupendous confidence in thecapacity of the human mind in Aristotle 14 .

The difference is, however, significant, too. Aristotle says: Thechain of reasoning does not extend in in f in i tum, it stopssomewhere. Descartes says: Though the chain of reasoningextends in i n f in i tum, we must stop somewhere.

To Aristotle the world was finite a unity of soul and body,matter and form. The idea of the infinite is one of the greatestdiscoveries of Descartes. It is clear and positive and therefore atrue idea, but it is for u s an indistinct one. We have to stopsomewhere. The consequence is that all questions that involveinfinity are beyond our science. There is a certain likeness betweenDescartes' God and Aristotle's Prime Moveran infinite being thatgives being to everything that is in this world. Descartes destroyedthe wellordered, rieh and colourful Cosmos of ancient and mediaevalscience. Give me extension and motion, and I will construct theworld. Beside this universe of extension and motion, there is alsothe Spiritual world in which man alone participates by virtue of hissoul. Until recently this dualism has been fundamental in Europeanthought.

After Descartes the interest in Aristotle s a philosopher hasbeen directed chiefly to his non-biological works. Scientists have

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Met. Alpha clatton l 993 a 30.14 See my Aristoteles p. 22.




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Thc Jmpact of Aristotle s Scicntific Ideas in the Middle Ages 133

chiefly directed their attention to those parts of his biologicalworks in which he has either recorded some notable observation orhas indicated some general line of classification which has provedof permanent interest or value. His philosophy of nature has arousedsome interest, but chiefly from the standpoint of the historian ofideas, s for instance in Sir Charles Sherrington s book Man o hisNature

During the 9 th and 20th Century an enormous amount ofinvestigation has been carried out by classical scholars and philol-ogists with the object of providing reliable texts, translations,commentaries and indices. In this respect the transmission of histhought t o us is no w almost completed. Professional interest willalways take the classical scholar, the philosopher and the historianof ideas back to Aristotle. His world of ideas is for us mo re than alimbo of curiosities, it is a permanent legacy of stimulating ideasand of acutely formulated problems. It is possible that a scientist,too, would find a fresh approach rewarding.

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