The Pseudo-Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics in Renaissance Culture1

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Abstract
Historians often assert that the origins of modern science lay in a conscious revolt against the authority of Aristotle, a revolt that was openly proclaimed by Pierre de la Ramée, Francis Bacon, William Gilbert, and Galileo Galilei in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. There is little agreement about the reasons for the revolt. Some hold that the essential characteristic of the new science was an increased attention to observation and experiment; others, that an emphasis on mathematics transformed the character of scientific inquiry. Those who emphasize the rôle of experiment have generally tended to favor what may be called social explanations of the rise of science, including technological, economic, religious, and political developments. In contrast, the rise of mathematical inquiries has been customarily linked with philosophical explanations of the new science, primarily in terms of Renaissance currents of orthodox Platonism and of esoteric Pythagoreanism.