Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

After the fall of the Roman Empire (western empire, separate from the Byzantine Empire), instability prompted many scholars to leave for safer territories, taking their manuscripts with them. As a result, Greek scholarship fell into disuse such that only works written in or translated into Latin were in use in western Europe. Prominent works available in Latin included the writings of Augustine, who was heavily influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy, and the books of Aristotelian logic, the Organon, translated by Boethius.

The knowledge-base of Greek philosophy eventually came under the control of the Islamic world, and such Muslim philosophers as Avicenna and Averroes built on the foundation of Aristotelian thought. As Christendom began to reconquer Muslim-controlled Sicily and the Iberian peninsula in the 11th century, various centers of learning came under Christian control, and the church sponsored efforts to translate scholarly works from Greek and Arabic into Latin to make them available to their own scholars.

The introduction of Aristotelian thought into a western Europe dominated by Neoplatonic philosophy produced an intellectual earthquake and produced significant friction between those committed to the old ways of thinking and those investigating new ways of thinking, sometimes resulting in excommunications and worse, although the targets of such actions depended on which faction was dominant at the time. Efforts by scholars to suppress rivals are not new. Over time, Aristotelian thought was mainstreamed through the efforts of such scholars as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas.

This book explores the intellectual upheavals of this time period and their influence on the development of the modern world. Furthermore, it drives home the debt modern society and scientific thought owe to the Scholastic thought of the late Medieval period, a debt intentionally forgotten by Modernism.