"The orthodox Aristotelian school minimized the importance of mathematics. Quantity was only one of the ten predicaments and not the most important. Mathematics was assigned an intermediate dignity between metaphysics and physics. Nature was fundamentally qualitative as well as quantitative; the key to the highest knowledge must, therefore, be logic rather than mathematics. With the mathematical sciences allotted this subordinate place in his philosophy, it could not but appear ridiculous to an Aristotelian for any one to suggest seriously that his whole view of nature be set aside in the interest of a simpler and more harmonious geometrical astronomy."
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The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; A Historical and Critical Essay (1924) was written by the American philosopher Edwin Arthur Burtt as his doctoral thesis. This work has had a significant influence upon the history and philosophy of science, as discussed by Floris Cohen in his The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry and by Diane Davis Villemaire in her E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher: A Study of the Author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Phys
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