The Catholic Church Sanctificatin of Aristotle's Writings

The medieval philosophical discussion in Europe originated exclusively by Scholastic Rationalism and was conducted under the shadow of intransigent dominancy of the monotheistic religions' worldview. For example, the cosmological discussion revolved around the formulation of a-priori knowledge, based primarily on Aristotle's writings sanctified by the Catholic Church and articulated in a process of logical deduction. The discovery of truth, according to this philosophical world view, is achieved by debate (Copleston, 1963; Osment, 1980; Russell 1986).

Thie Scientific Revolution that followed the discoveries of Copernicus caused the collapse of these centuries-old cosmological "truths" and marked the end of that world view. At the same time, this revolution led to the birth of a new radical approach to philosophy which was

The rise on this new philosophy became a substantial threat to the control the Catholic Church had on the definition of reality and its traditional dominance over the concept of truth. Consequently, in 1542, Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in order to maintain and defend the integrity of faith and for examining and prescribing errors and false doctrines. As a result, the following two centuries were characterized by a ferocious persecution conducted by the Catholic Church against all those who dare challenge its official definition of reality. The church's official stand declares that knowledge is only valid as an official philosophy if it originated from the holy scripts. Any other knowledge, including solid evidence and data achieved through experiments, is considered as the devil's work, meant to confuse the hearts of the believers and lead to heresy. The struggle against any philosophical and scientific development was part of a vast scale collision between the church and all those who rejected its authority over almost every aspect of life including theology and politics. This struggle is still active nowadays, e.g. as demonstrated by the prolonged discussion between Darwin's Evolution paradigm and the Creationist paradigm. The scientific reactance toward the church included the development of an empiricist philosophy and research method as opposition to the interpretive philosophical tradition (Russell 1986; Schmidt-Biggemann 2004; Pascale 2010).