Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy by Roger French and Andrew Cunningham

Abstract

Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy. By Roger French and Andrew Cunningham. (Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1996. Pp. x, 298.) French and Cunningham argue in this book that there was no medieval science, but only medieval natural philosophy; and this natural philosophy, they assure us, was radically different from what we now call science:. . there was no scientific tradition (in the modern sense of the term 'scientific') of looking at nature in the thirteenth century, only a religio-political way of doing so (p. 273). What primarily differentiated medieval natural philosophy from modern science, they argue, was religion; for the medieval investigation of nature was motivated and its conclusions shaped by religious interests. As a reaction against the recent (but now moribund) tendency to write the history of medieval science as though religion did not exist, this is a salutary conclusion. French and Cunningham do an excellent job of demonstrating the religious motivation, and thus the handmaiden status, of medieval natural philosophy.They are interested especially in the natural philosophies developed by the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century: they connect the Christian Aristotelianism of the Dominicans closely and convincingly with the Church's campaign against the Cathar heresy, and they associate the Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism of the Franciscans (the Aristotelian foundations of which they somewhat belligerently refuse to acknowledge) with the ideal of mystical contemplation emanating from pseudo-Dionysius. They also offer interesting and useful surveys of the idea ofnature from antiquity through the thirteenth century, of education within the mendicant orders and its relationship to the universities, of the natural philosophical literature (including encyclopedic works) produced by the mendicants, and more. It should be clear, then, that this book has many merits. However, French and Cunningham frequently weaken their case by oversimplification and overstatement, black-and-white dichotomies, and bold claims unsupported by textual evidence. They announce, for example, that Roger Bacon studied the multiplication of species and related topicsbecause he was a Franciscan friar (p. 238); that Albert the Great was motivated by a Dominican agenda to introduce mathematics into his Aristotelian natural philosophy (p. 180); that William of Conches was motivated to study philosophy for purely religious reasons (p. 76); that Franciscans undertook the investigation of nature because of their devotion to pseudo-Dionysius (p. 218). No textual support for any of these claims is provided; no uncertainty is expressed; no qualifications (mainly for religious reasons; partly because they were Dominicans or Franciscans or devoted to pseudo-Dionysius) are offered. …