Science really got going, Hannam argues, when Aristotle was challenged by theologians at the great universities (all founded in the medieval era, naturally). Orthodoxy would not accept that Aristotle’s “natural laws” could limit God’s powers, so thinkers were encouraged to investigate the “consistent and not capricious” workings of God’s universe for themselves. Experience, as Chaucer might have put it, started to chase after authority.
I don't quite get the reference to Abelard in this review. He was castrated, true, but not in any official way. Fulbert, Heloise's guardian, had some thugs do it.
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