On the status of the astronomy and physics in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed: a chapter in the history of science

British Journal for the History of Science 24 (4):453-463 (1991)
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Abstract

An interesting question arises in the context of the typically medieval description of the universe presented at the beginning of Maimonides' (1138–1204) great law code, theMishneh Torah. What was Maimonides' own attitude towards that account? Was it meant only as a statement of the best description of nature available at the time (and thus radically distinct from thehalakhic(i.e. Jewish legal) matters which make up the bulk of theMishneh Torah) or was it meant to be a description of the true nature of the universe as it really is, not subject to revision in the light of new paradigms or new models (and thus essentially similar to thehalakhicmatters in the text)? Answering this question will lead us to a better understanding of Maimonides' understanding of the nature of science and of what I shall call, for lack of a better term, scientific progress. Maimonides will be shown to hold that while sublunar science can reach perfection and completion such is not possible for superlunar science and that to the extent that the scientific matters in theMishneh Torahdeal with the latter they could not have been presented as the final description of the universe as it truly is.

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Citations of this work

Philosophical Cosmology in Judaism.T. Rudavsky - 1997 - Early Science and Medicine 2 (2):149-184.

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