Reforming Science

Another thing I was struck by in Baxter’s quote was his reference to Aristotle. Baxter was a contemporary of Isaac Newton (he was 28 when Newton was born), but Aristotle was still being taught at Cambridge when Newton studied there. I’m sure I’ve read that before, but it’s not always easy to rid oneself of common misconceptions about the relationship between the Church and science, especially when one studies history as little as I do. Hadn’t the Church come to her senses by now and tried to move beyond the embarassment of the Galileo affair? Hadn’t the Reformation delivered us from the superstitious cosmology of the Middle Ages? And yet here is a 17th-century Puritan invoking Aristotle as the scientific authority, not Galileo or Copernicus or Kepler. This highlights the fact that the Galileo affair was primarily a controversy over scientific authority, and the Church was firmly on the side of the scientific establisment - Copernicus conflicted with Aristotle. Surely an advocate of the common view wouldn’t go so far as to argue that the Church was continuing to stuff Aristotle down the throat of free thinkers like Newton?

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