| 3.12 |
PHILOSOPHY 1200 CE to 1400 CE: The reformed christian mind
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By the 1200s, European society had remerged from centuries of feuds and strife into nations of Kings and Queens with the blessing of the Church. |
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At the same time the previous fears of secular knowledge somehow damaging the church gave way to re-embracing scientific and ancient knowledge thanks the discovery of Aristotle’s great works and mathematics through Arab scholars such as Avicenna (980-1037). |
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In Aristotle, Christian scholars found a way to defeat Platonism as Aristotle himself had hoped it would against the teachings of his master 1000 years earlier. |
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So profound was the spread and movement of Aristotle’s philosophy through the ranks of Christian scholars that the 1200s to 1400s could be classed as the true great age of Aristotelianism.
Mystic contemplation and the arts gave way to the importance of grammar, logic and dialectics (classification).
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| 3.12.1 |
The end of realism and the supremacy of logic |
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Christian scholars found in Aristotle’s methods of argument a perfect weapon by which to defeat any enemy, any philosophical threat. |
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As a result, the church for the first time was able to coherently form an organized system for the identification, interrogation and judgment of heretics with Pope Gregory IX in 1231 instituting the papal Inquisition. |
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| 3.12.2 |
The rise of the universities |
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The age of Aristotelianism also represented a historic reversal of knowledge in general. Instead of organizing armies to systematically wipe out great knowledge (i.e. Patrick vs the Druid Kings of Ireland) confident in the infallibility of logic, the Christian church supported a new age of discovery. |
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Jewish texts, Arabic texts and all kinds of ancient manuscripts began to re-emerge and be translated. The centres of this work were also the centres of a new organized method of learning– the universities. |
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| 3.12.3 |
Scholasticism |
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Scholasticism is the term given to the theological and philosophical teachings of the schoolmen in the universities. The first two of these great centres of learning being Paris (1160) and Oxford (1168). |
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Teaching was by lecture and formal debate. A lecture consisted of the reading of a prescribed text (i.e. Aristotle, Plato, Avicenna) followed by the teacher's commentary on it. Masters also held debates in which the affirmative and negative sides of a question were thoroughly argued by students and teacher, before the latter resolved the problem. |
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There was no one Scholastic doctrine; each of the Scholastics developed his own, which was often in opposition with that of his fellow teachers. However, the universally accepted prime texts and methods for organized learning meant that a system that could be managed and controlled. To this day, all organized
Western learning (school, college, universities) is modeled on this adopted approach. |
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| 3.12.4 |
The principle of experimental proof |
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With Aristotle a new wave of rational thinking emerged in western philosophy. One of the most important ideas to emerge was the concept that things can be proven to be false or true through observable experimentation. |
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| Key concept: General principle of experimental proof |
Architect |
Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) |
Main influence |
Aristotle |
Idea |
(major works On Light) The study of nature is impossible without mathematics. By the observation of individual events in nature, man advances to a general law, called a "universal experimental principle," that accounts for these events. Experimentation either verifies or falsifies a theory by testing its empirical consequences. |
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The two great pioneers of the time, Grosseteste and his pupil Roger Bacon laid the ground work for our modern notion of science. |
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Bacon, more famous in history probably for his inventions such as gunpowder and mechanized machines also contributed greatly in the philosophy of science by proposing a universal wisdom exists that unifies all the sciences. |
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| Key concept: Natural principles of science |
Architect |
Roger Bacon (1220-1292) |
Main influence |
Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) |
Idea |
Man acquires knowledge through reasoning and experience, but without the latter he can have no certitude. Man gains experience through the senses and also through an interior divine illumination that culminates in mystical experience. However a universal wisdom exists as demonstrated through the natural sciences and scientific principles. |
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| 3.12.5 |
Free will and the laws of the Universe |
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While Aristotle logic opened a great many doors in the study of natural sciences, it presented difficulties to the notion of an omnipotent God. |
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The problem rests with that most basic of tests – an omnipotent God should by definition be able to intervene wherever he chooses. But if this is the case, what does this mean to free will? |
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It was Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) who first posed an argument that on reflection bears striking resemblance to the notion of Unique Collective Awareness (UCA) as both the dream and the dreamer.
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| Key concept: Free will and the laws of the Universe |
Architect |
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) |
Main influence |
Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) |
Idea |
(Major works Summa theologiae, Summa contra gentiles) The fundamental consistency of the realities of nature must be recognized. A physis (“nature”) has necessary laws; recognition of this fact permits the construction of a science according to a logos (“rational structure”). Nature, discovered in its profane reality, should assume its proper religious value and lead to God by more rational ways.
Creation (of the universe) is continuous, in which the dependence of the created (universe) on the creative wisdom (creator) guarantees the reality of the order of nature. God moves sovereignly all that he creates; but the supreme government that he exercises over the universe is conformed to the laws of a creative Providence that wills each being to act according to its proper nature.
This autonomy finds its highest realization in the rational creature: man is literally self-moving in his intellectual, volitional, and physical existence. Man's freedom, far from being destroyed by his relationship to God, finds its foundation in this very relationship.
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The notion that God acting within the Universe is confined to the same natural laws as all of us represents one of the greatest ideas in the formation of the western mind. |
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Today, only a handful of Christian and Islamic extremists actually believe in a God that can act in defiance of the laws of physics. However, at the time of Thomas Aquinas most people believed in an omnipotent God capable of changing the laws to suit himself. |
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| 3.12.6 |
In Gods own image |
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Effectively the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas represented the beginning of the modern Christian mind, a belief in a God of nature. He also went one big step further. Aquinas asserted that to be human is to be a living realization of the mind of God. |
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This is a radically new and different idea from those considered over the previous 1000 years. Suddenly, to be a living human is a positive thing, instead of a stinking hulk of bacterial fluids and rotting flesh. |
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Aquinas established the notion of “being”, which he defined as the act of existing (esse). God is pure being, or the act of existing. Man participates in being, or the act of existing, to the extent that his humanity, or essence, permits. |
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These understandings are so advanced and mysterious that to this day much of what Aquinas wrote is not properly understood or misinterpreted. |
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