IIRC, the Greeks intoduced rigorous (for the times) methods of asking questions of nature and arriving at their answers.
It depends on what you mean by rigorous. The greeks weren't concerned with mathematical precision, not only because they didn't have the mathematical tools that were discovered later, but because they believed -- correctly, as shown later -- that no method of inquiry would lead to final conclusions about the natural world.
The questions and answers may seem infantile now.
It might seem infantile for those who don't understand they were asking different questions. They were interested in knowing what something is, not what parts it's made of.
But the 'science' didn't go anywhere until Muslim scholars centuries later translated the works, which led to the Renaissance in Europe later.
You just overlooked the whole scholastic tradition, and eleven centuries of medieval philosophy, not to mention the muslim scholares who weren't mere translators. Ibn Sina was the real founder of Aristotelianism, which transcended the greek civilization, and that was 14 centuries after Aristotle died.
By the time the precursors of the Renaissance appeared, the scholastic tradition had already absorbed the muslim aristotelianism for three centuries, although at a very slow pace, and dictating a more rigorous approach. The Renaissance was more of a reaction against occultists like Giordano Bruno -- who curiously became an atheist icon today.. go figure -- than against the scholastic tradition.
reply
share