Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>
> Before modern scientific methods were developed astrology and
> astronomy overlapped and I'd say that in the middle ages astrology
> trumped astronomy. Medieval intellectual pursuits were about love
> and law and poetry, to borrow a phrase from Morrissey. Empirical
> quantification and measurement were then gleams in the eye of
> philosophers studying optics and were widwifed by double entry bookkeeping.
On the whole, I think Joanna is a bit closer to accuracy here. Re-read Canto II of the Paradiso. Empiricaldata, even a form of experimental collection of data, were part of medieval thought. They _did_ fail (I think it's accurate to say) to _abstract_ from the data but, rather, attempted to generalize it: hence the effort "to save appearances" as well as the scholastic doctrine, "Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses."
The "scientific revolution" of th 17th-18th centuries depended on the rejection of both the priority of sense data and the principle of "saving appearances." After all, _experience_ (sense data) make it overwhelmingly obvious that the sun travels around the earth. Newton's breakthrough (re gravity; I'm not familiar with the details his more important breakthroughs re optics) -- that breakthrough w as contingent NOT on paying attention to facts but on making the radical assumption that the same princple controlled BOTH the fall of the apple and the orbit of the moon!
Carrol