Abstract

This paper examines one of the factors of the Scientific Revolution (SR) of the early Modern period, namely, the role of Aristotelianism in the formation of the paradigm of modern science. For more than a century, the view of SR has prevailed in the literature as an anti – Aristotelian coup: philosophy of novatores came on, replacing Aristotelian one, and “modern science” succeeded Aristotelian scientia. This work highlights the importance for SR of both the ideas of Aristotle himself and the late Aristotelian tradition, as well as the degree of its influence as the dominant philosophical paradigm until the middle of the 17th century on the intellectual life of the epoch. It is shown that SR included not only a radical novelty in understanding nature and ways to know it, but also the transformation of a number of teachings and ideas that had been formed earlier, including Aristotelianism, and therefore it is wrong to present medieval Aristotelian scholasticism only as a background on which new theories (say, Copernican heliocentrism and Galilean kinematics) acquired the status of a new science, ignoring the potential of Aristotelianism as a common resource of knowledge for both innovators and traditionalists. Neither the experimental philosophy of F. Bacon and R. Boyle, nor the mathematics of G. Galileo, neither the mechanics of R. Descartes, nor, in a certain sense, even the physics of Newton were able to completely displace Aristotelianism. Of course, the influence of Aristotelian physical ideas at the first (natural philosophical) stage of development of SR gradually weakened over time (especially among researchers working outside the university tradition), but it did not exhaust itself completely. Using the theories and concepts developed by N. Copernicus and G. Galileo as an example, the article examines the influence of the Aristotelian tradition on them. It is shown that Aristotle’s natural philosophical ideas and approaches became an important source for the development of natural science in the early modern era.