The Scientific Dark Ages
The Complete History of Science
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The Importance of John's Criticism of Aristotle
St Augustine called philosophy the Handmaiden of religion. This meant that Christian theologians should always reject parts of it which may undermine their faith, such as Aristotle's cosmological ideas. John Philoponus wrote extensive arguments against aspects of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He believed in biblical creation and so set out to demonstrate an infinitely old universe was absurd. In his view, since these spheres were made from different forms of matter, they also had different laws of physics governing them. More importantly for us, John wrote an argument against Aristotle's theory of matter.
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