The Sleepwalkers (92 page)

3.
The Last of the Aristotelians

We
have
seen
that
Copernicus'
ideas
on
physics
were
purely
Aristotelian,
and
his
methods
of
deduction
followed
strictly
scholastic
lines.
At
the
time
when
the
Revolutions
was
written,
the
authority
of
Aristotle
was
still
very
considerable
in
the
conservative
academic
world,
but
rejected
by
more
progressive
scholars.
At
the
Sorbonne,
in
1536,
Peter
Ramus
received
an
ovation
when
he
took
as
his
thesis
"Whatever
is
in
Aristotle
is
false".
Erasmus
called
Aristotelian
science
sterile
pedantry,
"looking
in
utter
darkness
for
that
which
has
no
existence
whatever";
Paracelsus
compared
academic
education
to
"a
dog's
being
trained
to
leap
through
a
ring"
and
Vives
to
"orthodoxy
defending
the
citadel
of
ignorance".
¹⁷

At
the
Italian
universities
where
Copernicus
had
studied,
he
had
come
into
contact
with
a
new,
post-Aristotelian
breed
of
scholars:
the
new
Platonists.
For
the
decline
of
Aristotle
overlapped
with
a
new
Platonic
revival.
I
have
called
that
perennial
pair
the
twin
stars;
let
me
once
more
change
the
metaphor
and
compare
them
to
that
familiar
couple
in
Victorian
toy
barometers
–
a
top-coated
gentleman
with
an
open
umbrella
and
a
lady
in
gay
summer
dress,
who,
turning
on
a
common
pivot,
alternately
emerge
from
their
cubby-holes
to
announce
rain
or
shine.
The
last
time
it
had
been
Aristotle's
turn,
now
Plato
pops
out
again
–
but
a
Plato
entirely
different
from
the
pale,
other-worldy
figure
of
the
early
Christian
centuries.
After
that
first
period
of
Plato's
reign,
when
nature
and
science
had
been
held
in
utter
contempt,
the
reappearance
of
Aristotle,
the
chronicler
of
dolphins
and
whales,
the
acrobat
of
premiss
and
synthesis,
the
tireless
logic-chopper,
had
been
welcomed
with
relief.
But
in
the
long
run
there
could
be
no
healthy
progress
of
thought
on
the
dialectical
tightrope;
just
at
the
time
of
Copernicus'
youth,
Plato
emerged
again
from
his
cubby-hole
and
was
greeted
with
even
greater
joy
by
the
progressive
humanists.

But
this
Platonism,
which
came
from
Italy
in
the
second
half
of
the
fifteenth
century,
was
almost
in
every
respect
the
opposite
of
the
Neoplatonism
of
the
early
centuries,
and
had
little
more
in
common
with
it
than
a
hallowed
name.
The
first
had
brought
out
the
Parmenidian
side
of
Plato,
the
second
brought
out
the
Pythagorean
side.
The
first
had
divorced
spirit
from
matter
in
its
"dualism
of
despair";
the
second
united
the
intellectual
ecstasy
of
the
Pythagoreans
with
Renaissance
man's
delight
in
nature,
art
and
craftsmanship.
The
bright-eyed
young
men
of
Leonardo's
generation
were
Jacks-of-all-trades,
with
multiple
interests
and
a
devouring
curiosity,
with
nimble
fingers
and
nimble
minds;
impetuous,
restless,
sceptical
about
authority
–
the
radical
opposite
to
the
stuffy,
narrow-minded,
orthodox
and
pedantic
schoolmen
of
the
Aristotelian
decline.
Copernicus
was
twenty
years
younger
than
Leonardo.
During
his
ten
years
in
Italy,
he
had
lived
among
this
new
breed
of
men,
yet
he
had
not
become
one
of
them.
He
had
returned
to
his
medieval
tower
and
to
his
medieval
outlook
on
life.
He
took
back
with
him
one
idea
only
which
the
Pythagorean
revival
had
brought
into
fashion:
the
motion
of
the
earth;
and
he
spent
the
rest
of
his
life
trying
to
fit
it
into
a
medieval
framework
based
on
Aristotelian
physics
and
Ptolemaic
wheels.
It
was
like
trying
to
fit
a
turbo-prop
engine
on
a
ramshackle
old
stage-coach.

Copernicus
was
the
last
of
the
Aristotelians
among
the
great
men
of
science.
In
their
attitude
to
nature,
men
like
Roger
Bacon,
Nicolas
of
Cusa,
William
of
Ockham
and
Jean
Buridan,
who
predated
him
by
a
century
or
two,
were
"moderns"
compared
to
Copernicus.
The
Ockhamist
school
in
Paris,
which
flourished
in
the
fourteenth
century,
and
to
which
I
have
briefly
referred
before,
had
made
considerable
advances
in
the
study
of
motion,
momentum,
acceleration
and
the
theory
of
falling
bodies
–
all
of
which
are
basic
problems
of
the
Copernican
universe.
They
had
shown
that
Aristotelian
physics
with
its
"unmoved
movers",
its
"natural"
and
"violent"
motion
et
cetera
,
was
empty
verbiage;
and
they
had
come
very
close
to
formulating
Newton's
Law
of
Inertia.
In
1337
Nicolas
of
Oresme
had
written
a
Commentary
on
Aristotle
De
Coelo
–
in
fact,
a
refutation
of
it
–
in
which
he
attributed
the
daily
round
of
the
heavens
to
the
rotation
of
the
earth,
and
based
his
theory
on
much
sounder
physical
grounds
than
Copernicus,
as
an
Aristotelian,
could
do.
Copernicus
was
not
acquainted
with
the
discoveries
in
dynamics
of
the
Paris
school
(which
seem
to
have
been
ignored
in
Germany);
but
my
point
is
that
at
Merton
College
and
at
the
Sorbonne,
a
century
and
a
half
before
him,
a
succession
of
men
of
lesser
fame
than
Copernicus
had
shaken
off
the
authority
of
Aristotelian
physics
to
which
he
remained
a
life-long
slave.