The Origin of Empiricism

Essay on why the Scholastic-Aristotelian worldview remained popular

at universities until well into the eighteenth century.
Scholasticism was profoundly drenched in the Christian way of teaching, which was the dominant
institute that reigned over western universities. The dogmatic Christian way of thinking, which springs
from the undeniability of fact that a god created the universe, was well abled to use the strictly logical
approach of the Aristotelian school.

Because this way of thinking was so intertwined with the dominant religion and her sub-branches,
the process of overthrowing this established scholasticism wasn’t something that could just simply
spring about from the fact that some people found that a different approach could be more fruitful to
science. I’m referring to the thinking of people like Francis Bacon, John Locke and David Hume, the
‘founding fathers’ one could say of the school of thinking called British Empiricism.

Their approach to science was grounded in empirical evidence for stating theory, unlike the purely
upon reason based way of thinking characterized by the rationalism of the preceding millennia. While
the approach during the lessons given at the universities like Oxford and Cambridge was purely
deductive, in other words, their logic was based on reason to find general laws applicable to the
world, the works of Newton and Galileo and others used a completely different method. Rather then
to deduce truths from general laws, they tried to inductively analyze connections in reality based on
observations about the world.

The attack on scholasticism want solely a British phenomena. The seek for restoration of the
classical arts was faced with reluctance on the theological front, and in the aftermath of this disunity
the College de France was founded in 1530; A Parisian hallmark on the front of separation of religion
and science. Likewise in Germany, Martin Luther was advocating for secession, and the Reformation
heralded the end for the Scholastic school in the German academiae.

There were

Sources:

DONWAY, Walter, Scholasticism: How a Philosophical Monopoly Succumbs to New Ideas, July 19
2023, consulted on 02/03/2024, https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/reading-room/2023-07-19-
donway-scholasticism.