Осуждения аристотелизма в средневековой Париже.

Medieval restrictions questioning Aristotelianism

The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris. The Condemnations of 1277 are traditionally linked to an investigation requested by Pope John XXI, although whether he actually supported drawing up a list of condemnations is unclear. Approximately sixteen lists of censured theses were issued by the University of Paris during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of these lists of propositions were put together into systematic collections of prohibited articles. From this perspective, some historians maintain that the condemnations had positive effects on the development of science, perhaps even representing the beginnings of modern science. The writings of a number of medieval scholars were condemned, apparently for pantheism, and it was further stated that: "Neither the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy or their commentaries are to be read at Paris in public or secret, and this we forbid under penalty of excommunication." The University of Toulouse (founded in 1229) tried to capitalise on the situation by advertising itself to students: "Those who wish to scrutinize the bosom of nature to the inmost can hear the books of Aristotle which were forbidden at Paris." Nevertheless, the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, convened a meeting of conservative theologians and in December 1270 banned the teaching of certain Aristotelian and Averroist doctrines at Paris. Thirteen propositions were listed as false and heretical, some relating to Averroes' doctrine of the soul and the doctrine of monopsychism, and others directed against Aristotle's theory of God as a passive unmoved mover. "That the world is eternal". "That there was never a first human".—and questions such as free will and the immortality of the soul were doubtless subject to scholarly debate between masters and students. According to the historian Edward Grant, the theologians desired to condemn Aristotle's teachings on the eternity of the world and the unicity of the intellect. On 18 January 1277, Pope John XXI instructed Bishop Tempier to investigate the complaints of the theologians. "Not only did Tempier investigate but in only three weeks, on his own authority, he issued a condemnation of 219 propositions drawn from many sources, including, apparently, the works of Thomas Aquinas, some of whose ideas found their way onto the list." 49. "That God could not move the heavens with rectilinear motion; and the reason is that a vacuum would remain."

The long list has often been labelled as not being particularly organised, and that it is "broad in scope to the point of confusion."

Pierre Duhem considered that these condemnations "destroyed certain essential foundations of Peripatetic physics". Duhem's view has been extremely influential in the historiography of medieval science, and opened it up as a serious academic discipline. Historians in the field no longer fully endorse his view that modern science started in 1277. According to the historian of science Richard Dales, they "seem definitely to have promoted a freer and more imaginative way of doing science." Others point out that in philosophy, a critical and skeptical reaction followed on from the Condemnations 1277. Since the theologians had asserted that Aristotle had erred in theology, and pointed out the negative consequences of uncritical acceptance of his ideas, scholastic philosophers such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham (both Franciscan friars) believed he might also be mistaken in matters of philosophy. They stressed the traditional Franciscan themes of Divine Omnipotence and Divine Freedom, which formed part of Ockham's first thesis. Ockham's second thesis was the principle of parsimony: also known as Ockham's razor. This developed a new form of logic, based on an empiricist theory of knowledge. "While Scholastic in setting," as David Lindberg writes, it was "thoroughly modern in orientation. Referred to as the via moderna, in opposition to the via antiqua of the earlier scholastics, it has been seen as a forerunner of a modern age of analysis." It has been suggested that the new philosophy of nature that emerged from the rise of Skepticism following the Condemnations, contained "the seeds from which modern science could arise in the early seventeenth century."