They were also committed to a realist philosophy of science and were looking for causes of phenomena. 1230-1292), brought an important contribution to optical sciences (even if their appeal was more towards experience than experimentation). But it needs to be noticed that he, supported by John Peckham (ca. Although, following his teacher, he states that mathematical reasoning must be supplemented by experience to make its intuitions certain, it is again questionable whether he performed real experiments. Without it we are not able to understand the world. He claims that mathematics is not only essential for understanding all sciences. 1214-1294) was a disciple of Grosseteste. (He presents an analysis of four causes of thunder: 1) the formal cause is “rumbling sound in clouds,” 2) the material cause is “quenching of fire in cloud,” 3) the efficiency involved is described through the mechanism that produces the thunder (clouds, vapor, fire in air), 4) the final cause (according to Pythagoreans) is to terrify those detained in the infernal regions.) He would value a demonstration involving all four causes, but he thought they should be somehow quantifiable and amenable to mathematical treatment. It is also doubtful that he made real experiments. But he did not present any procedure of verification. 1168-1253), who tried to emphasize both the role of mathematics and the indispensability of experience and experiments (“in thought if not in deed”), which are supposed to verify or falsify the outcomes of physics. One of the first thinkers of that school, Robert Grosseteste (ca. They searched for explanations in mathematical terms, trying to relate them to Aristotle’s causality. Its main representatives followed the Pythagoreans and Plato, fostering mainly the mathematical component. The first important center of science and philosophy in Middle Ages was located in Oxford. My summary gives a small insight into the complexity of their ideas, and the importance of the causal reflection in their explanations. It proves that by no means it was a dark age, and that the modern science has its important predecessors in those working in the field of natural philosophy at that time. The second part of the written part of my Special Comprehensive Exam takes us back to the Middle Ages.
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