" The two dominating views of Renaissance Aristotelian epistemology, or scientific methodology, entail positions that are incompatible, if not contradictory.

The first view holds that Aristotelians believed that their knowledge was complete and certain because it was based on syllogism. Holders of this position believe that Aristotle, and his later medieval and Renaissance commentators, equated knowledge of the natural world with the logical methods found in the Analytics, which used syllogism for a model of unequivocal demonstration. These accounts begin with analyses of Aristotle, extend from Aristotle's supposed view to his scholastic followers, and find the rejection of belief in the certainty of knowledge about the natural world to be crucial to the scientific revolution. Thus according to this view, seventeenth-century English experimentalists overturned their predecessors' epistemology that used the demonstrative sciences as a model to attain the kind of certainty that compelled absolute assent. Moreover, the insistence on certainty purportedly endorsed by Aristotelian natural philosophers is considered opposed not just to the new natural philosophies but to the rhetorical traditions of Renaissance humanism that emphasized observation and contingent knowledge.

The second view, which stems from the groundbreaking work of first Ernst Cassirer and then John Herman Randall Jr., stresses the importance of the method called regressus, which combines new observationally based discoveries of causes (demonstratio quia or methodus resolutiva) with the certainty of syllogism in producing theoretical explanations (demonstratio propter quid or methodus compositiva). Using this model of method, natural signs, experience, and observations lead to the hypothetical determination of the causes of effects, what Averroes termed demonstratio signi (demonstrations from signs). Then by an intellective negotiatio, confidence in the hypothetical causes increases. Finally, the causes can then be used to explain the effects in a certain demonstration. Thus, regressus allows for the possibility of change and progress in natural philosophical knowledge and a place for hypothetical understandings of nature without rejecting the ideal of syllogistic demonstration. The possibility of change means that the results are not certain but rather provisional, especially for knowledge that has resulted only from the first stage of the procedure, the demonstratio signi. "

Craig Martin | Renaissance Meteorology

" While the combination of all three parts of the regressus was intended to bring about certainty or near certainty, the realization of this goal was not always possible because of the contingent, that is, accidental, nature or difficulty of the subject.

Recent scholarship has argued, for example, that Giacomo Zabarella, one of the leading proponents of and contributors to the regressus theory, did not apply the theory in his textbook, De rebus naturalibus. Zabarella, however, and many other Renaissance natural philosophers followed the first stage of the regressus in their discussions of meteorology, a field that recommended itself to demonstratio signi because of Aristotle's explicit use of signs in his own considerations of meteorological phenomena. The first stage of the regressus was taken to be provisional, not definitive.

Agostino Nifo, a natural philosopher who wrote on logic as well as on meteorology, described the discovery of causes through natural effects, a method he took to be typical of the natural philosophy, as "conjectural".

An examination of Renaissance Aristotelian meteorology, from Agostino Nifo to Niccolò Cabeo, demonstrates that Aristotelians believed many theories about nature to be provisional; at times, they attributed to them only instrumental value. They thought that their "physical hypotheses were provisional and revisable" in addition to being “removed from the realm of the demonstrative", which is also what Robert Boyle and other later experimentalists are said to have believed. Thinkers including Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Lodovico Boccadiferro applied the ideal of “saving the appearances" not just to astronomical theory but also to explanations of changes within the sublunary region. While epistemic goals and standards varied among thinkers, a number of them consciously followed at least the first stage of the regressus theory, the demonstration of the fact, in their attempts to establish hypothetical understandings of the causes of weather. Many were fully aware of the uncertainty of their findings and enunciated the provisional nature of their theories. This does not mean, however, that they were anticipating or applying the modern scientific method or Baconian induction. Rather their views were firmly based on Renaissance ideals of demonstration and dialectic, experience, Aristotelian textual analysis, and the utilization of signs. "

Craig Martin | Renaissance Meteorology

" An orator or poet never persuades the audience to do something as good, unless the audience, being taught by his arguments, affirms that what he says is true; for this reason, we said earlier with Aristotle, that every one of our actions depends on a particular syllogism, which is called the ruler of action; for we do not do anything as good unless we have concluded by such a syllogism that it is indeed good. "

Jacopo Zabarella

" ثم أدرج فيه [أي في علم الكلام] المتأخرون مسائل الإلهيات والطبيعيات والمنطقيات، وحاولوا الردَّ على الفلاسفة، وجعلوهم من خصوم عقائد الإسلام، ولبئس ما صنعوا.

وأوّل مَن صنّف على هذا المنحى هو الغزالي ثم ابن الخطيب الرازي، مع تعصّبٍ شديدٍ أبدياه، ووهمٍ كثيرٍ أتياه، وتبعهما جماعة قفوا أثرهما واعتمدوا تقليدهما.

وأحدث ابن الخطيب في الدين القولَ بإمكان الصفات، وزيادتها على الذات، وغيرية وجود الواجب، وغير ذلك من المحدَثات.

وجاء بعده التفتازاني، فأظهر الجلادة، وتهالك في إذاعة ذلك التعليم وإشاعته بين الغاغة، فصار ذلك مذهبًا يتداوله عامةُ مَن جاء بعده ويُنسب إلى السنة. "

وفية الأسلاف وتحية الأخلاف | شهاب الدين المرجاني

" وأقل ما يتأتّى فيه لطالب العلم من المدّة المعيّنة في حصول مبتغاه من الملكة العلمية على ما هو المتعارف من رسوم التعليم بما وراء النهر –وقومنا [أي بلاد قزان] ينقادون إليها في مراسمهم وطرق تعاليمهم، ويعترفون بفضلها على أنفسهم، ولا سيَّما بخارى لا يذكرونها إلا بتشريف اسمها وتكريم رسمها، وهم واقفون على أبعد منزلٍ من المعارف والعلوم، ونازلون بالبيداء على سوء الإدارة ورداءة التعليم، بل لا يزيدون عليهم إلا في الظاهر من وجه بأشياء قليلة– هو أنهم يقرأون من كتاب الفوائد الضيائية على خلاف وضع المؤلّف وموضوع الفن بالابتداء من مباحث المرفوعات، ثم المجرورات، ثم المبنيات، ثم المنصوبات بالعود قهقرى، ثم من أول الكتاب إلى مباحث المعرب والإعراب، ويمضي على ذلك أكثر من ثلاث سنين، ويتركون ما عداها من الفصول والأبواب.

ثم يأخذون بقراءة كتاب شرح الشمسية والحاشية الشريفية نحو سنتين، ولا يتجاوزون عن قول الشارح في أوّله «والمراد من المقدمة هاهنا» في سطور عديدة.

ثم بشرح العقائد النسفية للتفتازاني وحواشي الخيالي نحو قرائهم شرح الجامي [أي أكثر من ثلاث سنين].

ثم بشرح التهذيب للدوّاني ينقضي في قراءة قوله: «الحمد لله»، ويسمّونه بحث الحمد، وفي قوله: «هدانا» نحو ذلك، ويسمّونه بحث الهداية، وقوله: «جعل لنا التوفيق»، ويسمّونه بحث التوفيق، وربما يتركونه، ثم من قوله: «فهذا غاية تهذيب الكلام» ويسمّونه بحث الإشارة، ومن زادت منهم همّته وزخرت جرأته يقرأ من قوله «العلم» وما يتعلّق عليه من شرحه إلى قوله «إن كان إذعانًا للنسبة»، وذلك أيضًا على الندرة، وأي مناسبةٍ لمباحث الحمد والهداية والتوفيق والإشارة والعلم لفن المنطق مع ترك البحث عن مسائله؟! والله سبحانه المنّان، ولعمري إن لحمهما كلحم الفيل من ولد الأتان.

ثم بقراءة قسم الإلهيات من كتاب حكمة العين للكاتبي –على تشويش ترتيبها– مدة نحو ثلاث سنين.

ثم شرح العقائد العضدية للدوّاني والحواشي القراباغية التي هي الغاية في ركاكة الفهم وفقد الفائدة والانغماس على الأوهام الفارغة والخيالات الباطلة وسوء البيان وانغلاق العبارة، ويمضي على ذلك نحو أربع سنين. "

وفيّة الأسلاف وتحيّة الأخلاف | شهاب الدين المرجاني

" وربّما يَستبعد المُستبعِد قراءة كلمة واحدة مدة شهر وأكثر فضلًا عن السنة الكاملة، فاعلم أن ذلك لاشتغالهم في أثناء ذلك بقراءة كل حاشية ركيكة متعلّقة لهذه الكتب، أكثرها –بل غالبها– أبحاث واهية، وشبهات داحضة، وكلمات متعارضة متناقضة، مسرودة بعبارات فاسدة سقيمة، خارجة عن العربية، متعاقدة متغلّطة متفكّكة غير متماسكة، فتراهم يفرغون عن تحصيل الكتب وجملة العلوم لا يعرفون مسألةً منها، بل لا يدرون من أي شيءٍ يبحث فيها، وهُم على ظنٍّ أنهم قد فرغوا من تحصيلها وحصّلوا من عيون تفصيلها، ويرجعون إلى بلادهم بعمائم كالجبال ودعاوى واسعة كالبحار.

وقد قلت يومًا لواحدٍ من طلّابهم يدّعي العلم والتقدّم فيه: هل قرأت كتاب الشمسية؟

فقال: نعم، بل العقائد والتوضيح.

فقلت له: كيف ينعكس قولنا: ما شاء الله كان وما لم يشأ لم يكن؟

فاضطرب ولم يدرِ ما يقول، إلا أن ذكر كلمات تدل على بعض معناه اللغوي دلالةً واهية غير مستقيمة. "

وفيّة الأسلاف وتحيّة الأخلاف | شهاب الدين المرجاني

" The contention that meteorological theory was conjectural and at times only capable of "saving the appearances" was widely known among those concerned with this field in the sixteenth century. Moreover, this contention justified the application of new observations, which could be used as signs to correct Aristotle's own theory. For example, a number of Aristotelians as early as the 1520s used the observations of sailors to amend Aristotle's position that there was an uninhabitable torrid zone in the area around the equator. "

Craig Martin | Renaissance Meteorology

"We have of course become accustomed to thinking that the Metaphysics is evidently about metaphysics, and there is nothing wrong with thinking this. But Aristotle does not himself use this term, ‘metaphysics’, and when he wants to indicate what his present study is about, he uses terms such as ‘wisdom’ (sophia), ‘first philosophy’ (prōtē philosophia), and ‘first science’ (prōtē epistēmē)."
-Aristotle and the Metaphysics Vasilis Politis-

" The distinction between theories of scientific knowledge and the practice of natural philosophy is essential to the historical understanding of Renaissance thought. Epistemological ideals played a role in the presentation of ideas and guided the direction of natural philosophy; they should not be mistaken for actual methods of research. It is correct to distinguish Zabarella's logic from the paths followed in his treatises on cosmology and nature. Nevertheless, the methodus resolutiva, with its emphasis on using experience to modify and create provisional theories, guided Renaissance thinkers.

While certainty was the ideal for syllogistic knowledge, Renaissance commentators on the Meteorology recognized that the intractable nature of the field, the difficulty of accurate observations, the inaccessibility of many of the subjects, and the accidental nature of material causes rendered much of meteorology conjectural. Observations could lead to new theories, departures from Aristotle's own positions, which would not be certain but could strive to correspond to observable natural effects.

The difficulty of meteorological phenomena led authors to proofs within the field, which were not demonstrative in a strict sense, but dialectical, or, for Pomponazzi, even rhetorical. That this view was widespread is evidenced by Marcus Frytsche, who wrote an entire meteorological treatise, first published in Nuremberg in 1555, that, as announced in its title, followed the methodo dialectica. The arguments contained in this treatise were intended to give solid understandings of meteorology but not demonstrative proof. "

Craig Martin | Renaissance Meteorology