Abstract
I discuss two questions: (1) would Duhem have accepted the thesis of the continuity of scientific methodology? and (2) to what extent is the Oxford tradition of classification/subalternation of sciences continuous with early modern science? I argue that Duhem would have been surprised by the claim that scientific methodology is continuous; he expected at best only a continuity of physical theories, which he was trying to isolate from the perpetual fluctuations of methods and metaphysics. I also argue that the evidence does not support the conclusion that early modern doctrines about mathematics and physics are continuous with the subalternation of sciences from Grosseteste, Bacon, and the theologians of fourteenth-century Oxford. The official and dominant context for early modern scientific methodology seems to have been progressive Thomism, and early modern thinkers seem to have pitted themselves against it.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aristotle: 1930, Physica, W. D. Ross (trans.), Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Bacon, R.: 1859, Opus tertium, in Opera Hactenus Inedita, J. S. Brewer (ed.), Kraus reprint, London.
Bacon, R.: 1928, Opus maius, J. H. Bridges (ed.), Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Carbone, L.: 1599, ‘Dubitationes quaedam circa scientias mathematicas’, in Introductio in Universam philosophiam, N. A. Zalterium, Venice.
Clavius, C.: 1901, ‘Modus quo disciplinae mathematicae in scholis Societatis possent promoveri’, in Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Jesu quae Primam Rationem Studiorum anno 1586 praecessere, A. Avrial, Matriti.
Crombie, A. C.: 1977, ‘Mathematics and Platonism in Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy’, in Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer (eds.), Prismata, Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtlishe Studien, Franz Steinerverlag, Wiesbaden.
Descartes, R.: 1974, Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. X, C. Adam and A. Tannery (eds.), Vrin, Paris.
Duhem, P.: 1985, Medieval Cosmology, Roger Ariew (trans.), Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Galilei, G.: 1960, The Assayer, S. Drake (trans.), in The Controversy on the Comets of 1618, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Rochemonteix, C. de: 1899, Un Collège des Jesuites au XIIe et XIIIe siècle le collège Henri IV de la Flèche, Legvicheux, Le Mans.
Wallace, W.: 1984, Galileo and His Sources, The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science, Princeton, New Jersey.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilks, Y. Christopher Clavius and the classification of sciences. Synthese 83, 293–300 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413762
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413762