ABSTRACT
The Aristotelian-Platonic tradition of scholastic philosophy which has Thomas Aquinas as its central figure had an extremely long life. While it went through various stages often involving intense internal controversy it was still the basic type of philosophy taught in European universities into the 1700s. Partly because the tradition had too much mixed philosophy with theology, partly because too many primarily verbal disputes arose but mainly because the Aristotelian physics embedded in the system could not deal with the new findings in physics the Enlightenment philosophers searched for new approaches to perennial philosophical questions. In Scotland there was a very strong turn to the writings of Isaac Newton. His mastery of physics and the discovery of what were taken to be universal laws so different from the Aristotelian explanations seemed to be a key to the understanding of all reality.
