Were there Significant Differences between Medieval and Early Modern Scholastic Natural Philosophy? The Case for Cosmology

The onslaught against Aristotelianism and scholasticism in the seventeenth century effectively destroyed both as forces in science and natural philosophy. Attacks by the likes of Galileo, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and others, were largely responsible for the modern conception of Aristotelianism, which is perceived as a single, unchanging, monolithic entity stretching from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance-that is, extending over a period from approximately 1200 to 1650. As this perception hardened into historical fact, any real and significant distinctions that might have existed between medieval and Renaissance Aristotelianism were obliterated. In a recent study, Charles Schmitt ([1]: 7) has sought to counter this almost universally held view by demonstrating four propositions: