There is no clear
point at which the Dark Ages ended in Europe. Learning in some form
had been kept alive in the monasteries, but the interest of the
Christian fathers had lain in mysticism and religious relevance
rather than practical or theoretical science. The Arabs, who had
made great strides in the understanding of alchemy, mathematics and
astronomy throughout the period, maintained an interest in pure
science, and as this knowledge filtered gradually into Europe the
shadow of ignorance lifted. But. it was a slow process, taking
three or four hundred years.
Sometime between
1200 and 1225, Aristotle's works, which had been saved in part by
the Arabs and amalgamated with their own ideas, were rediscovered
by European intellectuals and translated into Latin. From this
point on, Aristotle's science returned to favour and took over from
Platonic mysticism, gradually fusing with Christian
theology.
Although this
development may be viewed as an improvement upon the Dark Age
mistrust of science and the Stoics' preoccupation with
spirituality, it created a new obsession - a marriage of
Aristotelian natural philosophy with Christian dogma. This meant
that any attack upon Aristotle's science was also seen as an attack
upon Christianity. Together, the two doctrines formed a powerful
alliance and created a world- view that was taught by rote almost
unchallenged in every university in Europe for almost half a
millennium, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth
century.
These twinned
beliefs produced a self-contained picture of the universe: God
created the world as described in the Scriptures and guided all
actions. All movement was not only set in motion by God but was
supervised by divine power. The Church's doctrine of divine
omnipotence thus dovetailed perfectly with Aristotle's belief in
the Unmoved Mover - that no movement was possible unless initiated
by an unseen hand. All matter consisted of the four elements and
was not divisible into atoms as Democritus had proposed. To
Aristotle, every material object was an individual complete entity,
created by God and composed of a particular combination of the four
elements. Each object possessed certain distinct and observable
qualities, such as heaviness, colour, smell, coolness. These were
seen as solely intrinsic aspects or properties of the object, and
their observed nature had nothing to do with the perception of the
observer.
To the
thirteenth-century mind, the notion that properties of an object
such as smell, taste or texture were partly open to interpretation
in the mind of the observer would have been totally alien. Every
property of an object was intrinsic and the same for all observers.
Furthermore, because Aristotle had rejected atomism, the concept
that matter was composed of tiny, indivisible elements would have
been equally foreign to most people of the time. And, because
Aristotelian ideas were now bound up inextricably with religion,
any philosopher who openly challenged any aspect of accepted
scientific ideology put his life in danger.
