亚里士多德主义与中世纪欧洲机械技艺思想的流变

A Study on the Aristotelian Tradition of Artes Mechanicae in Medieval Europe

亚里士多德对技艺的贬低态度代表了西方古典晚期和中世纪早期的主流哲学观点。经过阿拉伯思想浸润与杂糅的亚里士多德著作随着12世纪大翻译运动进入中世纪欧洲,中世纪思想家获得了一种评价机械技艺的范本,并对机械技艺的知识分类及其作用进行重新评价,形成了机械技艺的宗教救赎论、政体隐喻说以及世俗功能说等观念。这些不同的思想线索丰富了机械技艺在中世纪知识中的组织与分类,呈现出亚里士多德主义机械技艺观在中世纪欧洲的兴衰历程,不仅反映出当时思想家关于知识的本质和内容等观念的转变,而且为理解技术融入近代西方世界观的过程提供了一个超越传统科技史领域的更为广阔视角。

Aristotle's demeaning attitude towards arts or skills represented the dominant philosophical views in the late classical and early Medieval periods in the West. Aristotle's works, which were infiltrated and blended with Arabic thoughts, entered medieval Europe with the Renaissance of the twelfth century. The medieval thinkers obtained a model for evaluating artes mechanicae, and re-evaluated the knowledge classification and function, forming the concepts of religious salvation theory, political metaphor theory and secular function theory of artes mechanicae. These different thought clues enriched the organization and classification of artes mechanicae in medieval knowledge, and presented the rise and fall of Aristotelian views on artes mechanicae in medieval Europe. Not only does it reflects the transformation of thinkers' concepts about the essence and content of knowledge, but it also provides a broader perspective for understanding the process of integrating technology into the modern Western worldview beyond the traditional field of scientific and technological history.