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Peter Thiel said in a podcast:

Early Modern Science wanted to resist the aristotelianism of the Catholic church

This confused me because I thought that aristotelianism was the precursor to science.

I would define Aristotelianism as the belief that one could come to understand the universe by methods and observation. It was the precursor to analytic philosophy and empiricism. Aristotle's methods where an early version of the scientific method. So my answer to this question would be Yes, Aristotle was THE proto-empiricist.

Of course I'm basing this on actually having read Aristotle (and comparing him to Plato (idealist/anti-empiricist)) and don't actually have any knowledge of the history of Aristotelianism. Could someone help me out?

Mauro ALLEGRANZA
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Tom Huntington
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  • Very broad issue... See [Scientific Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution). In a very rough overview, yes Aristotle was an empiricist but modern science was **not only** empiricist but also (mainly...) mathematically minded. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Aug 24 '23 at 09:47
  • Thiel maybe alludes to the "endorsing" of Aristotelian metaphysics by the Church and the opposition of early modern Copernicanism: the issue was not empirical and the Medieval aristotelianism was very poor involved with empiricism. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Aug 24 '23 at 09:50
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    The relevant form of early modern empiricism was *experiment* that is much more than *observation*: Aristotle was a champion of empirical observation (biology, zoology) but the tradition of Aristotelian science mainly failed the develop a "modern" concept of experiment. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Aug 24 '23 at 09:51
  • Useful references into [this post](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/3106/where-does-aristotles-posterior-analytics-disagree-with-modern-philosophy-of-sc) – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Aug 24 '23 at 10:10
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA I'm satisfied thanks! You said you were a "pluralist" on science. Have you read any of [Kurt Doolittle](https://naturallawinstitute.com/docs/old-material/the-method/due-diligence/)'s blog. He says science is recursive due diligence of the elimination of falsehood. I disagree that mathematics is essential rather it is just another arrow in the quiver of due diligence. Mathematics becomes quickly abused by sudo-scientists trying to gain status. In essence, I agree with Doolittle that science is fundamentally an ethical discipline rather than a technical one. – Tom Huntington Aug 24 '23 at 22:21
  • Adding experiment to observation and "Hypotheses non fingo" I think are main advances of modern science over Aristotle – Tom Huntington Aug 24 '23 at 22:56
  • We should add that Peter Thiel is a remarkably shallow thinker, despite his education at Stanford. I've hardly encountered a more fatuous book than *Zero to One*, and I've read Peikoff's contributions to Ayn Rand's school of thought. Be cautious in thinking that his opinions about the development of modern scientific methods are more than freshman oversimplifications that Thiel fixed in his mind on his way to the moral abyss he's cast himself into. – Kristian Berry Aug 27 '23 at 04:38
  • @KristianBerry I was thinking this was more of a cliché he was repeating than his original opinion. I guess one's opinion on Thiel just depends on which team they side with. I was interested in that his pre-registered prediction came to pass, but he doesn't seem to have an accurate model of reality, he just has some humble heuristics and good instincts – Tom Huntington Aug 27 '23 at 05:31
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    My two main objections to Zt1 are: the shift from 0 to 1 is replicated at every limit ordinal/cardinal in the ascending hierarchy, so it's far less meaningful than he makes it sound (and is not even accurately stated, since the continuum of numbers in the unit interval are not all, or even mostly, given via succession on 0); second, he has hardly any grasp on Rawls' ethical/political philosophy, which is a glaring lack of knowledge (comparable to a physicist not understanding Feynman, I'd venture). – Kristian Berry Aug 27 '23 at 06:50

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