PART TWO: The Reception of the Statutory Theory of Proof in Sweden 5. The Seventeenth-Century Reception of the Statutory Theory of Proof in Sweden An Introduction: The Aristotelian WorldViewAbandoned In due course, the Cartesian epistemological revolution reached northernmost Europe as well. Still in 1642, however, the rector of Uppsala University felt obligated to remind the professors that they ought not to “p^^^ent anything new, so that [they] would not seem to do more or better than others, which, without doubt, would cause anger and discord.” In 1645, he added that none of the professors should, “without the consent of His Royal Majesty or Academic Consistory, begin lecturing on any other old writer than those mentioned in the University’s Constitutions. Let no-one oppose himself to the good opinion of the old writers, or defend his own opinion or a criticismof an old writer ...”' However, during the course of the seventeenth century, the teachings of empirist thinkers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon made their way to the universities of Sweden. Yet it was not until the 1660s that Cartesianismbegan to attract followers in Uppsala, and in 1689 King Charles XI declared that “a free use and practice of philosophy” be allowed in all the universities of the country. Cartesianism did not make its way to the Academy of Turku, however, until in the 1690s. Still, the Aristotelian world viewpersisted in academic teaching into the eighteenth century, when it began to be dismantled.- Thus, the Aristotelian world viewbased on absolute, rigid views on matters of truth began to be forcefully challenged in Sweden around the same time that the statutory theory of proof was adopted by the legal practice at the end of the seventeenth century. As suggested above, the legal theory of proof in the version that it was adopted in Sweden reflects this epistemological change. Even more evidently, there seemed to be a disparity between the law of proof ' Klingc - Knapas - Lcikola - Strömberg 1987 p. 556. - Ibid. pp. 557-565; Lindroth 1976 p. 62; Kallinen 1995 p. 317.
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