Platonism or Aristotelianism? : a contribution to the history of medicine and science / by Ludwig Edelstein.

  • Ludwig Edelstein
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Platonism or Aristotelianism? : a contribution to the history of medicine and science / by Ludwig Edelstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    say that. He is certainly a descriptive writer of the first rank but one must never forget for what purpose the description is meant. The fact that Aristotle starts from observation does not make of him a modern scientist or a scientist at all; for he begins with the phenomena only in order to ascend to metaphysical principles. This brief and very fragmentary survey of Platonic and Aris¬ totelian ideas, as far as they concern scientific thought, may suffice to show that the antithesis of Platonism and Aristotelianism as it is usually formulated is not tenable. “ The dreamer Plato,” or “ Plato, the metaphysical poet,” or, horrible dictu, “ Plato, the repre¬ sentative of the cults,” 27 the “ fact-loving Aristotle ”—-all such concepts are false indeed because they are unfair abstractions or wholly inadequate to the facts. Nor is it possible to oppose “ the philosopher Plato” to “the scientist Aristotle”;28 both are phi¬ losophers, even if scientific research and the evaluation of facts are differently accentuated in their systems. As regards the modern scientist, who examines the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies in order to find out what they mean to him and to his work, he will find in both ideas which are incongruous with his own conceptions, and others with which he can agree. Whether there is, in fact, an irre¬ concilable opposition of Plato and Aristotle in their philosophical outlook, as has been claimed in antiquity and as is claimed nowa¬ days—from the point of view of the modern scientist such an antithesis does not exist, or it exists only in a different sense. Platonism and Aristotelianism, both can be stimulating for him, as they have been for many an earlier generation, though in various ways. Plato will be the eternal inspiration of the mathematician, Aristotle that of the descriptive scientist or humanist. To be sure, such a concept of Platonism and Aristotelianism is also an abstrac¬ tion which oversimplifies and emphasizes certain features to the exclusion of others of equal or even greater importance. Yet it at 27 R. Spillmann, quoted by Silvette, loc. cit., p. 1014, note 2. 38 That is what is really meant by Coleridge’s distinction between born Aris¬ totelians and Platonists (cf. above, p. 758), as is clear from the following words: “ Yet what a mind was Aristotle’s . . . the parent of science, properly so called . . . but he confounded science with philosophy, which is an error.”
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