ers whose works were available to the medieval scholars, the most influential one had to be Plato. In Norman Cantors book, he observes that, Christianity was built as much on Plato as on the Judaic tradition (Cantor, 18). Because Platos work so influential, it would be illuminating to look at exactly what Platos ideas were, as well as how they were reinterpreted by medieval scholars. According to Cantor, To Plato ideas, or conceptual forms, were not idle fantasies, but essential realities. When we refer to justice or the state or love, we are actually referring to something that has an independent existence outside our minds (Cantor, 16). On the other hand, material objects such as a table, which are commonly assumed to have more reality than mere ideas, actually have less reality to a Platonist, because A table would not have come into existence without the idea of a table; it is the idea that gives it shape and reality. Pure, ultimate reality is pure Idea, and the physical world that we touch and see has a reality only insofar as it participates in or is formed by pure Idea (Cantor, 16).It is easy to see how a philosophy like this could have been eagerly assimilated into medieval Christianity, which denigrated the body in favor of the spirit, and all material things in favor of God. However, it is important to recognize that Platonism, or, more specifically, Neoplatonism, as the form reinterpreted by the medieval Christians came to be called, carries within it enormous implications for the medieval scientist. Truly refined and intellectual minds had no reason to resort to the analysis of nature as a way of approaching or appreciating the Divine, because reality was not to be found in nature but in ideas. Consequently, it would have been absurd (and sacrilegious) to learn about anatomy from a cadaver, because we know all we need to know about man from reflecting on the Ideal Man with our rational sense.Thus it was possible for men to ...
