In the era known as
the Dark Ages, as the Roman Empire was in rapid decline, education
and learning became dominated by religious fanaticism. The
disciples of this new movement, the Stoics, believed in the supreme
importance of pure spirit over material existence and therefore
shunned learning about the physical world as an end in itself. To
them, the scientific Greek philosophy exemplified by Aristotle's
work was too mechanistic, too embedded in physical reality.
Instead, the musings of Plato held much greater relevance and were
perfectly in tune with the new obsession with religious
meaning.
Plato had taught an
anthropocentric view of reality in which everything was created and
carefully controlled by a supreme being who held the interests of
humanity paramount. For Plato, the movements of the planets were
there simply to enable the marking of time, and he viewed the
cosmos as a living organism with a body, a soul and reason. He also
saw numerical relevance and meaning in all natural processes, and
because of this he placed great importance upon mathematics.
However, he abhorred experimental science, which, according to one
historian, he 'roundly condemned as either impious or a base
mechanical art'.