Duhem’s importance as a support for the neo-Aristotelian position lies in his revolutionising
of the history of science, a revolution that rehabilitated the scientific importance
of medieval thinkers.3 He brought about this revolution through being the first historian to
give real consideration to (or even to actually read) key medieval scientific texts, a consideration
that led him to conclude that the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ did not occur in
the seventeenth century at all, and was not a revolution, but was instead a steady process
that began in the middle ages. This conclusion means that the Enlightenment view is false,
and that Aristotelian metaphysics is not incompatible with science, since it was accepted
by the medieval scientists who got the modern scientific project off the ground.