INTEODUCTOEY. 3 



held that Plato and not Aristotle should be considered to be 

 the ally of the Church. 



The Aristotelian writings were also assailed by men 

 who worked hard to ascertain facts and test the truth of 

 the Aristotelian philosophy by experiment, when possible. 

 Their attacks happened to be directed against some of the 

 weakest parts of Aristotle s teachings, especially those re 

 lating to natural philosophy, and based mainly on abstract 

 reasoning, and, to make matters worse, sometimes mis 

 interpreted by the Aristotelians themselves. Long before 

 the Reformation, Eoger Bacon had expressed his con 

 tempt for the Aristotelians and their Latin translations of 

 Aristotle s works. Of Aristotle himself, he spoke highly, 

 and at the end of chap. iii. of part 1 of his Opus Majus, says 

 that, although Aristotle did not arrive at the end of know 

 ledge, he set in order all parts of philosophy. A much 

 more determined attack was made after the Reformation 

 by Galileo, Lord Bacon, and other experimentalists. One 

 very direct attack by Galileo is of more than ordinary 

 interest. In his Physics, iv. c. 8, s. 8, Aristotle says that 

 when bodies fall through various media the rate of falling 

 depends on : (1) the nature of the medium, (2) the weights 

 of the falling bodies, other things being equal. He then deals 

 with these determining causes, and, although his reasoning 

 is sometimes obscure and occasionally inconsistent, it is 

 evident that he considered the velocity of a falling body to 

 be proportional to its weight. The Aristotelians at Pisa 

 strenuously supported this view, and, unable to convince 

 them of error by argument, Galileo resorted to experiment. 

 He ascended the leaning tower of Pisa, and showed that 

 bodies of different weights, dropped together from a con 

 venient part of the tower, struck the ground simultaneously. 

 He is said to have used two shot, one ten times heavier 

 than the other. Notwithstanding this experiment, the 

 Aristotelians still argued against Galileo, and would not 

 abandon their opinion that the velocity of a falling body 

 was proportional to its weight. They were greatly incensed 

 against Galileo, and in 1591 he found it advisable to resign 

 his professorship at Pisa. The way in w T hich the Aristo 

 telians at Pisa defended what they believed to be the views 

 of their master is a striking proof of the great influence of 

 Aristotle s writings, even as late as the end of the sixteenth 

 century. 



Lord Bacon made caustic comments on Aristotle, and 



