Scholasticism
In the 13th century, the teachings of Aristotle were considered more important than those of Plato. Scholastic education was very much based on written texts, and with arguments for and against ideas in those texts. In this way it differed greatly from modern science, which is based on observations from nature. In Aristotle the scholastics chose someone who was himself quite an original investigator of the natural world. But the scholastics themselves dealt almost entirely with the world in manuscripts written in two ancient languages. One was in Latin, the language of the Vulgate Bible and the other was Ancient Greek. Greek opened the doors to the writings of the Greek philosophers in their own language, at least so far as their works survived. The motto of Boethius “As far as you are able, join faith to reason” reminds us that all scholastics were mediaeval Christians. Their main concern was to see how the Greek ideas could be fitted into their religious view of the world.