During the Middle Ages the existence, authority and control deposited in the hands of God played a large and significant role in the lives of the people of its era. For them, God embodied as the Supreme Good, had created the world while it was each person's mission in life to seek the path for salvation among the enigmas and mysteries manifested in nature by God's presumed touch and presence.
The Relationship towards God as opposed to a New Human-Centered Perspective
The philosophy and science of the Middle Ages, known generally as Scholasticism, reflected that tendency in its teleological expression and manifestation. The thinkers of the medieval age had little interest in empirical matters as they often shunned the world of the senses and regarded sense impressions as deceptive.
Everything in the universe was a symbol linked and related to the spiritual salvation of humankind. Nature was not viewed or enjoyed for its own sake, but served as the symbolic expression of God's existence. Nature was a collection of signs and symbols created by God and mankind, considered a child of God, had as its supreme task to return to a relation with God, something that humanity had lost previously.
Yet in the Renaissance, some of these beliefs underwent significant change and the focus became nature and humanity itself, not so much humanity's relation to God. It became of importance to study mankind and the “horizontal” relation between its members as opposed to the “vertical” relation to God in the medieval sense.
The Role of Early Science and Scientific Outlook
Science then slowly moved away from a teleological perspective. Scholasticism was being openly criticized and thinkers sought a new method for the practice of science. It was a science that was not predetermined on the assumption of everything in nature serving a purpose and a means of communication of God. Renaissance philosophers rather started to view nature and the world as a separate and independent entity existing for and following its proper rules and serving its own purpose.
As this shift was developing, over the following centuries beginning with the Renaissance, mankind became more interested in the world of facts. Facts were seen as all that is material, lacking thought and “completely determined in its own behaviour.” These facts were defined as a sharp contrast to the mind, according to the early philosophy. Minds for them would be receptive of eternal truths, the freedom and responsibilities to choose between good and evil.
As such, it was the early forms of the division and separation of mind and matter, a dualistic conception of and outlook on the universe where matter belonged to the realm of natural physics and mind to the domain of theology and ethics. The seeds of such changes which came to lay out and define modern scientific thought were planted in the minds of the Renaissance and its break away from the medieval conception and definition of the universe was an important step in the history of science.
Readers may also enjoy Hierarchy as a Worldview in the Middle Ages: How the Philosophy of Analogy Influenced Social Structure, along with God as the Ultimate Authority in the World: Copyrights and the Middle Ages, and Renaissance and a Humanist Approach to Fine Arts: The Shift towards Human-centered Focus in Architecture and Painting.
Sources:
Jones, W. T. Hobbes to Hume: A History of Western Philosophy. United Kingdom: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 1980.
Arash Farzaneh - Arash Farzaneh is a writer and a language professor. He has a Master's degree in French literature with a minor in Psychology. Since his ...
Join the Conversation