It can be inferred from the passage that, according to Pierre Duhem, the 1277 Condemnations:

reestablished Aristotelian determinism as the primary framework for medieval university education.

allowed medieval scholars to formulate theories that mathematically corresponded to actual cosmic reality.

represented the culmination of late medieval physics that directly resulted in Galileo’s formulation of inertia.

served as a catalyst for speculative physical theories by diminishing the authority of a prevailing philosophical doctrine.

According to the contemporary scholars mentioned in the passage, Galileo differed from his medieval predecessors primarily in his:

rejection of the medieval concept of impetus in favor of strictly teleological theories.

ability to formulate completely unprecedented physical concepts without relying on prior intellectual traditions.

belief that mathematical models described the genuine physical structure and reality of the universe.

reliance on a qualitative understanding of nature that bypassed Aristotelian logic.

The author introduces the phrase secundum imaginationem in the third paragraph primarily in order to:

emphasize the highly theoretical and non-realist nature of medieval mathematical physics.

provide an example of the specific conceptual vocabulary Galileo inherited from Jean Buridan.

illustrate the conceptual superiority of early modern empirical science over medieval scholasticism.

undermine the orthodox perspective that medieval traditions were merely dogmatic impediments.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously undermine the contemporary scholarly view of the Scientific Revolution as described in the third paragraph?

Historical records indicate that Nicole Oresme’s formulation of impetus was mathematically less sophisticated than Galileo’s later mechanics.

Newly discovered journals reveal that Galileo frequently viewed his own mathematical equations merely as convenient theoretical fictions rather than true descriptions of reality.

Extensive documentation shows that medieval scholars faced intense religious scrutiny for their qualitative theories of nature.

Evidence suggests that Pierre Duhem selectively ignored medieval texts that adhered strictly to Aristotelian determinism.

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The Continuity Thesis and the Scientific Revolution

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Question No. 1+4 −1MCQ Single Answer

Reading Passage

For generations, historians of science characterized the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a radical epistemological rupture. According to this prevailing narrative, figures like Galileo and Newton unequivocally severed ties with the Aristotelian scholasticism of the Middle Ages, replacing a qualitative, teleological understanding of nature with a rigorously quantitative and empirical framework. This orthodox perspective posited that medieval intellectual traditions were fundamentally antithetical to scientific progress, acting merely as dogmatic impediments that had to be wholly discarded before true science could emerge. In the early twentieth century, however, physicist and historian Pierre Duhem challenged this paradigm with his "continuity thesis." While excavating medieval manuscripts, Duhem discovered that fourteenth-century Parisian scholastics, such as Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme, had articulated proto-inertial theories of motion—specifically the concept of impetus—that seemingly prefigured Galileo’s own mechanics. Duhem argued that the Scientific Revolution was not a sudden explosion of novel insight but rather the organic culmination of late medieval physics. According to Duhem, the true conceptual watershed occurred not with Galileo, but with the 1277 Condemnations in Paris, which freed Christian thought from the strictures of Aristotelian determinism and catalyzed imaginative, albeit theoretical, physical speculations. Modern historiography acknowledges Duhem’s invaluable contribution in rehabilitating medieval science but finds his continuity thesis ultimately overstated. Contemporary scholars emphasize a crucial methodological divergence that Duhem obscured: while scholastic natural philosophers employed mathematical formulations primarily as hypothetical constructs—an approach rooted in secundum imaginationem (according to the imagination)—early modern scientists asserted that mathematics represented the actual, physical reality of the cosmos. Thus, although Galileo may have inherited specific conceptual vocabulary from his medieval predecessors, his epistemic commitment to mathematical realism constituted a profound discontinuity. The revolution, therefore, resided not necessarily in the formulation of entirely unprecedented concepts, but in the ontological status newly ascribed to mathematical physics.

The primary purpose of the passage is to: