1.4 The Medieval Philosophy
During the Middle Ages, from the
5th to the
15th century,
the West gradually abandoned the mystical image of the Universe and started
to accept the ideas of ancient Greek philosophers, such as Ptolemy and
Aristotle, with their geocentric cosmological model, where the Earth was at
the center and other heavenly bodies rotated around it in a series of
concentric spheres. This gradual change in European thinking was
accomplished through their contact with the Islamic world, where astronomy
had been developed by many Muslim astronomers and philosophers, starting
from the preceding Greek philosophy, in addition to their original
remarkable contributions that were also based on various theological
sources.
Beginning in the 9th century,
Europe began to become more prosperous and urban. This urged some European
scholars to travel to parts of the Islamic and Byzantine territories in
order to learn from their renowned scholars. They had to learn Arabic so
that they could read the astronomical works, that had been already
translated from Greek into Arabic, along with the original works and
commentaries of Muslim astronomers and philosophers. Eventually, those
European scholars translated some of these works into Latin, which most of
their other fellow scholars could read, unlike Greek or Arabic. In this way,
the Europeans gained their first access to the writings of ancient Greeks,
along to the original works written in Arabic.
Beginning in the twelfth
century, Arab scholars, scribes and various translators gradually introduced
Europe to the science of astronomy as it had developed in Islamic
civilization, based on earlier Hellenistic models, primarily the geocentric
model of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Therefore, by the end of the 11th century, some
of Aristotle’s works were translated into Latin, as well as Ptolemy’s
Almagest which was translated from its Arabic translation by Gerard of
Cremona (1114-1187 AD). The title of this famous work “Almagest” is still
the Arabic title.
Along with this flourishing
rise in the educational and intellectual level in Europe, universities
started to be established, such as the University of Bologna in Italy in
1088, Oxford University in 1096, and Cambridge University in 1209.
Consequently, the language of instruction in all European universities was
exclusively Latin, and the curriculum consisted mainly of moral philosophy,
natural philosophy, and metaphysics, most of which are directly based on
traditional Aristotelian thinking.
It was primarily through the
work of some Christian scholars, such as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD),
that the ancient Greek views of the Universe merged with Christian theology.
Aquinas was crucial in making the Aristotelian natural philosophy acceptable
to Christians, and he asserted that philosophy and theology were indeed
compatible, and that both lead to the truth. He used the metaphor of the
“two books” ; the first is the Bible, and the other is the “Book of Nature” .
In this way he was able to convince many other prominent intellectuals that
philosophy could be useful to study theology.
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
