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This book is the first of a three-volume set introducing the history of scientific thought (including social and human science). The area covered in this volume is ancient Mesopotamia, classical Antiquity and the Islamic Middle Ages. Combining general descriptions with extensive excerpts from original sources in English translation, it concentrates on ways of thinking and actual argumentation and not just on results and mistakes; questions of validity are primarily dealt with in the perspective of the time of the writing, not on that of the 21st century. The work is of great interest to historians of science and culture, students as well as seasoned workers – but also for amateurs willing to invest the necessary serious efforts.

The monograph offers an in-depth, source-oriented presentation and analysis of the complex discussions that took place between ca. 1230 and 1350 on the differentiation and expansion of the structural concept of scientific knowledge and certainty in lifeworld-contingent areas of investigation. It makes transparent a development in the course of which a graduated, multidimensional conception of knowledge and certainty emerges. In the process, the masters gain pioneering insights into the philosophy of science. Starting from the key data provided by Aristotle, the scholastic scholars'productive, far-reaching further thinking leads to a deeper understanding of the nature and reliability of scientifically acquired knowledge. These intellectual endeavours were significantly challenged by the increasing knowledge of the spectrum of the transmitted Aristotelian and Arabic sciences. They also received significant impulses from epistemological reflection in theology.

In Aristotle's Empiricism, Jean De Groot argues that an important part of Aristotle's natural philosophy has remained largely unexplored. She shows that much of Aristotle's analysis of natural movement is influenced by mathematical mechanics that emerged from late Pythagorean thought. De Groot draws upon the pseudo-Aristotelian Physical Problems XVI to reconstruct the context of mechanics of Aristotle's time and to trace the development of kinematic thinking from Archytas to the Aristotelian Mechanics. She argues that the influence of kinematics on Aristotle pinpoints the original meaning of his concept of power, or potentiality, as a physicalistic meaning addressed to the problem of movement.