Every era is nothing but a product of its former t
DODO 2012-10-30
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In the last chapter, Edward mentioned that “An impressive array of scholarship testifies that modern science emerged in Western Europe as a result of the Scientific Revolution… That same scholarship has proclaimed that the emergence of modern science… owes little or nothing to the Middle Ages.” And he doesn’t agree with it, so do I. As Edward presented, the three crucial pre-conditions for the occurred of modern science, translations, university and theologian-natural philosophers, are all important causes that been prepared in Middle Ages. From my perspective, I think that almost everything has something to do whit the coming thing, the idea of Aristotle, the commentaries or critics of the works from Aristotle, the development or disagreement on Aristotle’s ideas, no exception. An old Chinese saying “a hero is nothing but a product of his time” I want to expand this saying as “every era is nothing but a product of its time”. And now I am dividing my report into three parts, start with the brief review of science development in Middle Ages, then give a summarize on the contribution of Aristotle, and at the end, I want to talk about the sentence I expanded with the Middle Ages as my example.
1 A brief review of science development in Middle Ages
In order to use the Middle Ages as my example, it’s necessary to get familiar to the development of it. As the Edward mentioned the three pre-condition of modern science occurred in Middle Ages, I am going to introduce the development of them briefly. From 0 AD to 392 AD, Christianity spread in a peaceful way for a very long period about 400 years. Different from other religion, Christian shared numerous cultural with other pagan neighbors and fellow citizens, and as to treat the legacy from ancient Greek, what they do is profitable utilize Greek philosophy and learning for Christian wisdom. In other word, they saw the Greek legacy as their handmaiden, to serve for Christian. But since the Greek science is unavailable to Latin, so the legacy they inherited from the Greek is limited before eleventh century. Then, the great age of translation was preceded by the rollback of the Muslims in Spain and their defeat in Sicily during the eleventh century. With the fall of Toledo in 1085 and the capture of Sicily in 1091, a now reinvigorated Western Europe came into possession of significant centers of Arabic learning, and intellectually starved Europeans were eager to make their contents available in Latin, the universal language of learning in Western Europe. Spanish was the center of translating while Toledo was foremost. Many extraordinary translators contribute a lot to the prosperous era of translation during twelfth and thirteenth century, for example, Gerard, who translated the ancient works into Latin world to the end of his life, had at least 70 translations, that “drastically altered the course of Western science. They translated from Greek to Syriac to Arabic to Spanish to Latin, or Arabic to Hebrew to Latin. Some significant translations were also made direct translation from Greek to Latin, especially in Italy and Sicily. The direct translation from Greek to Latin is the preferred translations for medieval scholars, since it’s fidelity to the original text.
Almost in the same time, the universities had emerged as a result of the transformation of society and intellectual life that had occurred in Western Europe by the twelfth century. Since the students and masters often one city to another in order to search for the right master and sufficient student, they often become foreigners in the cities, no right, no privileges. So the masters and students saw advantages of association and used the universitas, the organization with guide and corporation organized by the people who practice the same trade or craft, as a model on which to base their own university. Once the university emerged, the church and the secular authorities encourage their, and they received important monopolistic privilege. The universities take a great part in the history since they “had the legal right to negotiate on a wide range of problems with the external authorities that controlled the various governmental and religious jurisdictions in which it was located.” It seems like the discussion in ancient Greece. at that time, a person who attended at a university, even for a short period or without acquisition of degrees, were regarded as a helpful thing for shaping their life long career. The masters in the universities were interchangeable and the methods used in the teaching included ordinary and extraordinary lectures as well as disputation, which provide a great degree of freedom for the student to think of their own way. The courses teach in the universities including logic, the quadrivium, which functioned as the source of theoretical and exact science for medieval university students, and the three philosophies: moral philosophy, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. Because so many courses and aspect need to teach in universities, the master required a large number of teaching materials, especial from the ancient Greece, which push the translations and commentaries on the ancient works. Owe to the universities, the science revival and developed into new stage and it produce theologians, physicians, lawyers and teachers for next generation.
As for the theologian-natural philosophers, “who were not only trained in theology-most had theological degrees-but who also had previously attained the degree of master of arts or its equivalent and were therefore thoroughly trained in that discipline”. As thing should be contradiction between the theologian and natural philosophers, “that the truths of natural philosophy, based on the application of natural reason to a priori principles and sense experience, could not be reconciled with the truths of faith.”, for example, the doctrine of the double truth, the world is eternity in the natural philosophy while it was believed to has a beginning as God create it for faith. Nevertheless, “if the theologians at the universities had decided to oppose Aristotelian learning as dangerous to the faith, it could not have become the focus of study in European universities. Because of this consideration, Greco-Arabic science and Aristotelian natural philosophy could become the official curriculum of the universities. And it was believed that natural philosophy was essential for a proper elucidation of theology. Since that, theologians usually had a considerable degree of intellectual freedom to cope the natural problem between God’s absolute power and the natural world and they can hardly hinder their inquiries into physical world. Theologians also offered little opposition to the discipline of natural philosophy largely because they too were heavily involved with it. “They were significant contributors to both natural philosophy and sciences … enhance their understanding of Scripture”.
Those three pre-conditions as Edward presented, provided an environment that was conducive to the study of science.
2 Aristotle’s contribution to middle ages
In this book, Edward used large part to describe the contribution that made by Aristotle. Chapter 4: what the middle ages inherited from Aristotle; chapter 5: the reception and impact of Aristotelian learning and the reaction of the church and its theologians; chapter 6: what the middle ages did with its Aristotelian legacy; chapter 7: medieval natural philosophy, Aristotelians, and Aristotelianism. We can see that at least half of this book (4 chapters of 8) processed with something concern with Aristotle. It seems that the development of science largely based on the successor and objection to Aristotle’s idea.
To begin with the translation of the works of Aristotle, the Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, On the Soul and Topic etc, play a very important role in the development in that time. Many translators not only translated his book, but also write commentaries on it to express their own thinking. What’s more, many Aristotle’s works that had been translated were used as the teaching materials, for example, Topics for the logic lecture, Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysic for the three philosophies, which I mentioned above as the most important and formed the core of a universities education, and all the works I mentioned before were all teaching materials. And besides the works, Aristotle’s idea about the world evoked the thinking for the people, four elements, motion in Aristotle’s physics, the celestial region and terrestrial region. One of the most famous topics is whether the world is eternity or not. As Aristotle insisted that the world is eternity without beginning or ending while the Christian claimed that the world was created by God so that it had a beginning. This contradiction didn’t exterminate the Aristotle’s idea but established the doctrine of the double truth that both of those two statements are right. We can make a conclusion bravely that the position of Aristotle’s ideas were so honorable that even thought God cannot eradicate it, and it even put limitations on God’s absolute power such as the question about the vacuum. With such influence in the people’s mind, Aristotle’s idea was dangerous to the Church and its theologians, so there were several bans on his works and idea during the Middle Ages. For instance, the condemnation of 1277 that “reflected issues that were directly associated with Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and, therefore, their condemnation formed part of the reception of Aristotelian learning.” But to view the history of Western Christianity as a whole, the condemnation “ought to be interpreted as relatively minor aberrations”. It doesn’t stop the dissemination of Aristotle’s works and ideas. The total questions on these Aristotelian treaties constitute the heart of medieval natural philosophy.
What the arts masters had learnt show the Aristotle influence in thirteenth century. They needed to “cope with the problematic aspects of Aristotle’s thought”, “they announced that they were merely repeating Aristotle’s opinion”. And during the Middle Ages, “natural philosophy remained what Aristotle had made it”.
Not only who inherited the Aristotle’s idea made contribution to the science, but also the “anti-Aristotle” one made contribution, even much larger than the former one had made. For instance, Galileo derived the famous idea that a resistant medium is merely a retarding factor in the fall of bodies from the anti-Aristotelian tradition. Even though it’s antithesis to Aristotle’s idea about the motion, it’s developed still based on his idea.
In truth, as Edward said in page 167, confidence in Aristotelian natural philosophy had been steadily eroding during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the importance of Aristotle cannot be overestimated, the evidence that mentioned above is just a tips of the iceberg.
3 Every era is nothing but a product of its time
In page 170, Edward raised a question that “why did science as we know it today materialize only in Western society?” To answer this question, we need to admit that the science as we know it today materialize only in Western society first. It seems the statement is obviously true, and we can never put disputation on the truth that the modern science did occur in Europe first. And bases on this truth, Eurocentrism developed. Some historians even claimed that the miracle, that they call this achievement, happened in Europe because of the advantage which hold by European but not all the human beings. However, what I want to say is that the occurrence of the modern science is not all from Europe. Its causes contain the achievements gathered from all over the world, for example, the decimal system, which Chinese had used it as our counting system before 1046 BC, Arabic figure, invented by Indian, spread to Western Europe by Arab traders, and the fourth great inventions etc, all this event above made huge contributions to the development of modern science that we cannot obliterate. In a larger scope, the develop process of human beings, the use of fire, the awakening of curiosity, the attempt of interpreting the phenomenon, can attribute to the occurrence of modern science. The contribution to the modern science should be attributing to all the human beings. The world is a whole, so is the development of human beings, without the former’s preparation, even thought what the ancient do didn’t mean to prepared for it, the modern science can never come into being. The achievements in the recent 400 years are the product of its former time. Regarding the modern science as the product only of European’s effect is as wrong as regarding it as the result of The Scientific Revolution.
There is no doubt that, as we can see in this book, Aristotle contribute a lot to the modern science, the achievements were most made by inheriting from his works and developed from his idea, whatever agree or disagree. Someone may think that without Aristotle, the process of the science may slow down or even stop. This statement can also place on many great men, such as Plato, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein etc. It seems impossible to find out how the history develops without those great men exactly, it will become an endless discussion on this, but for me, from my perspective, I tend to think that without them, someone else will fill in, to achieve the same achievements, at least same degree sooner or later. Let’s take Newton and Leibnitz as example, who invented the calculus almost in the same time around 1665. They even have an argument for the patent on it. Since they invented it almost in the same time independently, the calculus was called the Newton- Leibnitz formula. What’s more, when the world was separate, each tribe develops their own language to communicate, each region experience slave society. Even though many different among each region, the general orientation are so similar. This is the evidence to support my view. Without Aristotle, we may have Aristotla or some other people to create the equal, or even the same developed world. No matter he is Aristotle or Aristotla, they are nothing but a product of his time and their time is nothing but a product of the former time.
Every era is nothing but a product of its time, the modern science is the product of the time of ancient Greece and Middle Ages, and the era of translation, the emerged of the universities and the theologian-natural philosophers is the product of their previous preparation of demand. Nothing occur suddenly without reason, accident contained in the inevitable, even the inevitable can cause much result.