The Conflict of Methods at the End of the Middle Ages

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PRoVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. III OCTOBER, 1941 No.4 THE CONFLICT OF METHODS AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 I T ffiS PAPER will deal with an historical fact, which has been, to my mind, of major importance in the development of modern western thought: I mean the conflict of methods that, at the end of the Middle Ages and above all at the time of the new philosophy of Bacon and Descartes, caused modern Physics, the modern explanation of nature's phenomena, to seem radically and absolutely incompatible with Aristotelian metaphysics and scholastic philosophy. I should like briefly to examine the philosophical implications of this fact. Perhaps the conclusion thus attained may shed some light on the discussions of our age. The conflict of which I speak had begun in the Middle Ages-already in the 13th century. At that time it app~ared as a conflict between the schools of Oxford and the schools of Paris. The University of Paris was dominated by the 1 Paper read at the Ninth Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences, held at,the New School for Social Research, New York, April 27, 1941. 527 528 JACQUES M.ARITAIN Aristotelian reform whose masters were Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas; its main task was to build up a synthesis of traditional Christian thought by the light of a metaphysics and a theology renewed, as to their conceptual systematization, by the principles of Aristotle-of an Aristotle recast and baptized by Thomas Aquinas; its chief concern was, therefore, metaphysical and theological. The University of Oxford was. inspired, on the contrary, by the old Augustinian tradition, that is, in brief, by Platonism (by a Platonism in which many Aristotelian notions had a place); and, at the same time, the Oxonians were dominated by the desire of applying the Platonist-mathematical conception of the world to the explanation of physical phenomena. Both mathematics and experience were their guiding rules. Even in philosophy and theology, the influence of this logico-mathematical and empiricist trend of mind played a major part. Already Roger Bacon asserted: "It is impossible to know things of this world, unless mathematics is known." And it is from his pen that the term" experimental science" appears for the first time in the history of human thought. Later on, in the 14th Century, many Doctors of the University of Paris, John Buridan, Albertus of Saxony, Peter of Ailly, Nicole Oresme, were to accept in philosophy the Nominalist inspiration, ~nd at the same time to prepare in mechanics and physics the discoveries and the new concepts which characterize modern science. They were the precursors of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. II If we seek to bring to light the philosophical roots of the question, we must first note that Aristotelian metaphysics and the Aristotelian philosophy of nature-at least taken in their genuine significance, in their true structure-did not intend to explain phenomena, but to discover the ontological structure of things and the hierarchy of essences in terms of intelligible being. Starting from sense experience, they did not remain on the plane of experience, but tried to perceivethe intelligible transsensible features of the nature of things thanks to an analysis THE CONFLICT OF METHODS 529 grounded on the first intuitions of the intellect, above all on the metaphysical' intuition of being; thus they conceived reality in terms of substance and accident, of qualities, of causes-that is, of the four genera of causes, the principal of which was final causality. Nevertheless, and that was the great misfortune of Aristotelianism , Aristotle himself and his mediaeval followers were not content with this ontological or properly philosophical analysis. Putting too great and too bold a confidence in the philosophical intellect and the philosophical tools, they naturally extended their ontological explanation of the supra-empirical structure of things into an expla~ation of the empirical phenomena. In point of fact their philosophy of nature, as is well known, was both a philosophy of nature and a science, a scientific interpretation of the...