versed as he was in theology, he declared in a treatise concerning
Heaven and Earth, [Footnote 33] that "in studying nature we have not
to enquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His
creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have
rather to enquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally
bring to pass." This can scarcely fail to seem a surprising
declaration to those who have been accustomed to think of medieval
philosophers as turning by preference to miraculous explanations of
things, but such a notion is founded partly on false tradition, with
regard to the real teaching of the medieval {296} scholars, and even
more on the partisan declarations of those who thought it the proper
thing to make as little as possible of the intelligence of the people
of the Middle Ages, in order to account for their adhesion to the
Catholic Church.
[Footnote 33: De Coelo et Mundo, I. tr. iv., X.]
As a matter of fact, Albert's declaration, far from being an
innovation, was only in pursuance of the truly philosophic method
which had characterized the writings of the great Christian thinkers
from the earlier time. Unfortunately, the declarations of lesser minds
are sometimes accepted as having represented the thoughts of men and
the policy of the Church. It is not these lesser men, however, who
have been in special honor. No one, for instance, can possibly be
looked upon as representing Church teaching better than Augustine, who
because of the depth of his teaching, yet his wonderful fidelity to
Christian dogma, received the formal title of Father of the Church,
which carried with it the approval of everything that he had written.
There is a well-known quotation from St. Augustine which shows how
much he deprecated the attempt to make Scriptures an authority in
science, and how much he valued observation as compared with
authority, in such matters as are really within the domain of
investigation by experiment and observation.
He says: "It very often happens that there is some question as to the
earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting
which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most
certain reasoning or observation" (that is, from the ordinary means at
the command of an investigator in natural science), "and it is very
disgraceful and mischievous, and of all things to be carefully
avoided, that a {297} Christian speaking of such matters as being
according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an
unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him
to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain
himself from laughing." It is the opinions of such men as Augustine
and Albert that must be taken as representing the real attitude of
theologians and churchmen toward science, and not those of lesser men,
whose zeal, as is ever true of the minor adherents of any cause,
always is prone to carry them into unfortunate excesses.
Albert the Great was indeed a thoroughgoing experimentalist in the
best modern sense of the term. He says in the second book of his
treatise On Minerals (De Mineralibus): "The aim of natural science is
not simply to accept the statements of others, that is, what is
narrated by people, but to investigate the causes that are at work in
nature for themselves." When we take this expression in connection
with the other, that "we must endeavor to find out what nature can
naturally bring to pass," the complete foundation of experimentalism
is laid. Albert held this principle not only in theory, but applied it
in practice.
It is often said that the scholastic philosophers, and notably
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, almost idolatrously worshipped at
the shrine of Aristotle, and were ready to accept anything that this
great Greek philosopher had taught. We have already quoted Roger
Bacon's request to the Pope to forbid the study of the Stagirite. It
is interesting to find in this regard, that while Albert declared that
in questions of natural science he would prefer to follow Aristotle to
St. Augustine--a declaration which may seem surprising to many people
{298} who have been prone to think that what the Fathers of the Church
said medieval scholars followed slavishly--he does not hesitate to
point out errors made by the Greek philosopher, nor to criticise his
conclusions very freely. In his Treatise on Physics, [Footnote 34] he
says, "whoever believes that Aristotle was a god must also believe
that he never erred. But if one believe that Aristotle was a man, then
doubtless he was liable to err just as we are." In fact, as is pointed
out by the Catholic Encyclopaedia in its article on Albertus Magnus,
to which we are indebted for the exact reference of the quotations
that we have made, Albert devotes a lengthy chapter in his Summa
Theologiae [Footnote 35] to what he calls the errors of Aristotle. His
appreciation of Aristotle is always critical. He deserves great credit
not only for bringing the scientific teaching of the Stagirite to the
attention of medieval scholars, but also for indicating the method and
the spirit in which that teaching was to be received.
[Footnote 34: Physica, lib. VIII., tr. i., xiv.]
[Footnote 35: Summa Theologiae, Pars II., tr. i., Quaest iv.]
With regard to Albert's devotion to the experimental method and to
observation as the source of knowledge in what concerns natural
phenomena, Julius Pagel, in his History of Medicine in the Middle
Ages, which forms one of the parts of Puschmann's Handbook of the
History of Medicine, has some very interesting remarks that are worth
while quoting here: "Albert," he says, "shared with the naturalists of
the scholastic period the quality of entering deeply and thoroughly
into the objects of nature, and was not content with bare superficial
details concerning them, which many of the writers of the period
penetrated no further than to provide a nomenclature. While Albert was
a churchman and an {299} ardent devotee of Aristotle in matters of
natural phenomena, he was relatively unprejudiced and presented an
open mind. He thought that he must follow Hippocrates and Galen rather
than Aristotle and Augustine in medicine and in the natural sciences.
We must concede it as a special subject of praise for Albert, that he
distinguished very strictly between natural and supernatural
phenomena. The former he considered as entirely the object of the
investigation of nature. The latter he handed over to the realm of
metaphysics."
"Albert's efforts" Pagel says, "to set down the limits of natural
science shows already the seeds of a more scientific treatment of
natural phenomena, and a recognition of the necessity to know things
in their causes--_rerum cognoscere causas_--and not to consider
that everything must simply be attributed to the action of
Providence. He must be considered as one of the more rational
thinkers of his time, though the fetters of scholasticism still
bound him quite enough, and his mastery of dialectics, which he had
learned from the strenuous Dominican standpoint, still made him
subordinate the laws of nature to the Church's teaching in ways that
suggested the possibility of his being less free than might
otherwise have been the case. His thoroughgoing piety, his profound
scholarship, his boundless industry; the almost uncontrollable
impulse of his mind after universality of knowledge; his
many-sidedness in literary productivity; and finally the universal
recognition which he received from his contemporaries and succeeding
generations,--stamp him as one of the most imposing characters and
one of the most wonderful phenomena of the Middle Ages."
Perhaps in no department of the history of science {300} has more
nonsense been talked, than with regard to the neglect of experiment
and observation in the Middle Ages. The men who made the series of
experiments necessary to enable them to raise the magnificent Gothic
cathedrals; who built the fine old municipal buildings and abbeys and
castles; who spanned wide rivers with bridges, and yet had the
intelligence and the skill to decorate all of these buildings as
effectively as they did,--cannot be considered either as impractical
or lacking in powers of observation. As I show in the chapter The
Medieval University Man and Science, Dante, the poet and literary man
of the thirteenth century, had his mind stored with quite as much
material information with regard to physical science and nature study,
as any modern educated man. It is true that the men of the Middle Ages
did not make observations on exactly the same things that we do, but
to say either that they lacked powers of observation, or did not use
their powers or failed to appreciate the value of such powers, is
simply a display of ignorance of what they actually did.
On the other hand, when it comes to the question of the principles of
experimental science and the value they placed on them, these men of
the medieval universities, when sympathetically studied, prove to have
been quite as sensible as the scientists of our own time. The idea
that Francis Bacon in any way laid the foundation of the experimental
sciences, or indeed did anything more than give a literary statement
of the philosophy of the experimental science, though he himself
proved utterly unable to apply the principles that he discussed to the
scientific discoveries of his own time, is one of the inexplicable
absurdities of history that somehow get in and {301} cannot be got
out. The great thinkers of the medieval period had not only reached
the same conclusions as he did, but actually applied them three
centuries before; and the great medieval universities were occupied
with problems, even in physical science, not very different from those
which have given food for thought for subsequent generations. We shall
see in the next chapter how successfully they applied these great
principles of the experimental method, and how much they anticipated
many phases of science that we are apt to think of as distinctly
modern.
{302}
CHURCHMEN AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES.
There can be no doubt at all in the minds of those who know anything
about the early history of the universities, but that the Popes were
entirely favorable to the great educational movement represented by
these institutions. It is ordinarily supposed, however, that the
medieval universities limited their attention to philosophy and
theology, and that even these subjects were studied from such narrow
religious standpoints, as to make them of very little value for the
development of human knowledge or the evolution of the human mind. Any
such supposition is the result of ignorance on the part of those who
entertain it, as to the actual curriculum of studies at the early
universities, though it is not surprising that it should be very
common, because, unfortunately, it has been fostered by many writers
on educational subjects, especially in English. Scholasticism is often
said to have been the very acme of absurdity in teaching, and its real
import is entirely missed. Students and professors are supposed to
have been limited in their interests to dialectics and metaphysics in
the narrowest sense of these terms, and much time was, according to
even presumably good authorities, frittered away in idle speculations
with regard to things that are absolutely unknowable. [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: Much of the remainder of this chapter is taken from the
chapter on What and How They Studied at the Universities, in my book
The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries. (Catholic Summer School Press,
N. Y.) Some of the sources from which the material is obtained will be
found more fully referred to there, and further information with
regard to scientific studies at these universities will be found in
the chapter on Post-graduate Work in the same book, from which a
certain amount of material is used again here.]
{303}
Anyone who studies the works of the professors at these medieval
universities can scarcely fail to become entirely sympathetic toward
these scholars, who devoted themselves with so much ardor to every
form of learning that interested them, and who did not fail to
accomplish at least as much for future generations, as any other
generation of university men in history. Professor George Saintsbury
in his book On the Rise of Romance and the Flourishing of Allegory,
which is really the story of thirteenth century literature in Europe,
in the series of Periods of European Literature, [Footnote 37] in
summing up the contributions of these medieval professors to human
knowledge, said:
[Footnote 37: Scribners, 1896.]
"Yet, there has always, in generous souls who have some tincture of
philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over
the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars, who,
whatever they were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do,
could think. And there have been in these latter days some graceless
ones who have asked whether the science of the nineteenth century,
after an equal interval, will be of any more positive value--whether
it will not have even less comparative interest than that which
appertains to the Scholasticism of the thirteenth."
Nothing could well be less true than the impression that philosophy
and theology were the exclusive subjects of the medieval university
curriculum. If because our modern universities devote a great amount
of time to physical science in its various forms, and more of their
publications concern this department of educational work than any
other, it were to be said by some future generation that our
universities occupied themselves {304} with nothing but physical
science, it would be much more true than the expressions which stamp
medieval university teaching as limited to dialectics and metaphysics.
Besides science in the modern universities, philosophy in all its
branches is the subject of ardent devotion, and the classics and
languages are not neglected, and medicine and law are important
post-graduate departments, and even theology comes in for a goodly
share of attention and occupies the minds of many deep students. In
the medieval universities, medicine particularly occupied a very large
share of attention; but all the physical sciences were the subject not
only of distant curiosity, but of careful investigation, many of them
along lines that are supposed to be distinctly modern, yet which are
really as old as the university movement.
Turner in his History of Philosophy [Footnote 38] summed up the books
most commonly used, the method of examination and of conferring
degrees, in a way that shows the character of university teaching
during the thirteenth century, and brings out not only its
thoroughness, but also the fact that a good deal of time was devoted
to what we now call physical or natural science, since the treatises
on animals, on the earth and on meteors, under which all the phenomena
of the Heavens were included, represent almost exactly those questions
in physical science that most men who do not intend to devote
themselves particularly to science care to know something about at the
present time. He says:
[Footnote 38: Ginn & Co., Boston and New York, 1903.]
"By statutes issued at various times during the thirteenth century,
it was provided that the professor should read, that is, expound,
the text of certain standard {305} authors in philosophy and
theology. In a document published by Denifle (the distinguished
authority on medieval universities), and by him referred to the year
1252, we find the following works among those prescribed for the
Faculty of Arts: Logica Vetus (the old Boethian text of a portion of
the Organon, probably accompanied by Porphyry's Isagoge); Logica
Nova (the new translation of the Organon); Gilbert's Liber Sex
Principiorum; and Donatus's Barbarismus. A few years later (1255),
the following works are prescribed: Aristotle's Physics,
Metaphysics, De Anima, De Animalibus, De Caelo et Mundo, Meteorica,
the minor psychological treatises and some Arabian or Jewish works,
such as the Liber de Causis and De Differentia Spiritus et Animae."
As time went on in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
attention to physical sciences was increased rather than diminished.
Much of Albertus Magnus's work, and practically all of that of Aquinas
and Roger Bacon, was done after the date here given (1255).
The medieval workers at the universities were under the obligation of
having to lay the foundations for modern thought, instead of being
able to build up the magnificent superstructure which has risen in the
seven centuries since the universities were founded. Without the
foundation, however, the building would indeed not be worthy of
admiration. Their work is concealed beneath the surfaces of things,
but is not the less important for that, and is in most ways more
significant than many portions of the structure that have risen above
it. Unless one digs down to see how broad and deep and firm they laid
the foundations, the modern critic will not be able to appreciate
their work at its true value. Very few men are able to do this; still
fewer have the time or the inclination. The consequence is a sad lack
of sympathy with these old-time workers, who nevertheless did their
work so well, and whose accomplishment meant so much for the modern
time. It is not hard to {306} show that their minds were occupied with
just the same problems that interest us, and the wonderful thing is
that they anticipated so many of our conclusions, though these
anticipations are wrapped up not infrequently in a terminology that
obscures their meaning for any but the patient, sympathetic student.
In his Harveian Lecture, Science and Medieval Thought, Professor
Clifford Allbutt, of the University of Cambridge, England, said:--
"Each period of human achievement has its phases of spring,
culmination, and decline; and it is in its decline that the leafless
tree comes to judgment. In the unloveliness of decay, the Middle
Ages are as other ages have been; as our own will be; but in those
ages there was more than one outburst of life; more than once the
enthusiasm of the youth of the West went out to explore the ways of
the realm of ideas; and if we believe ourselves at last to have
found the only thoroughfare, we owe this knowledge to those who
before us traveled the uncharted seas. If we have inherited a great
commerce and dominion of science, it is because their argosies had
been on the ocean and their camels on the desert. _Discipulus est
prioris posterior dies;_ man cannot know all at once; knowledge must
be built up by laborious generations. In all times, as in our own,
the advance of knowledge is very largely by elimination and
negation; we ascertain what is not true, and we weed it out. To
perceive and respect the limits of the knowable, we must have sought
to transgress them. We can build our bridge over the chasm of
ignorance with stored material in which the thirteenth century was
poor indeed; we can fix our bearings where then was no foundation;
yet man may be well engaged when he knows not the ends of his work;
and the schoolmen in digging for treasure cultivated the field of
knowledge, even for Galileo and Harvey, for Newton and Darwin. Their
many errors came not of indolence, for they were passionate workers;
not of hatred of light, for they were eager for the light; not of
fickleness, for they wrought with unparalleled devotion; nor indeed
of ignorance of particular things, {307} for they knew many things.
They erred because they did not know, and they could not know the
conditions of the problems which, as they emerged from the cauldron
of war and from the wreck of letters and science, they were
nevertheless bound to attack, if civil societies worthy of the name
were to be constructed."
We are very prone to think that the interests of the men of the Middle
Ages were very different to our own, and that they had not the
slightest inkling of what were to be the interests of the future
centuries. Ordinarily students of science, for instance, would be sure
to think that electricity and magnetism, interest in which is supposed
to be a thing of comparatively recent years, or at most of the last
two centuries, would not be mentioned at all in the thirteenth
century. Such an idea is not only absolutely false to the history of
science as we know it, but is utterly unjust to the powers of
observation of men who have always noted, and almost necessarily tried
to investigate, the phenomena which are now grouped under these
sciences. Perhaps no better idea of the intense interest of this first
century of university life in natural phenomena can be obtained, than
will be gleaned at once from the following short paragraph, in which
Brother Potamian, of Manhattan College, in his brief, striking
introduction to the letter of Petrus Peregrinus describing the first
conception of a dynamo, condenses the references to magnetic
manifestions that are found in the literature of the time. [Footnote
39]
[Footnote 39: The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus, N. Y., 1904.]
Most of the writers he mentions were not scientists in the ordinary
sense of the word, but were literary men; and the fact that these
references occur, shows very clearly that there must have been
widespread interest in such scientific phenomena, since they had
attracted the {308} attention of literary writers, who would not have
spoken of them doubtless, but that they knew that in this they would
be satisfying as well as exciting public interest.
"Abbot Neckam, the Augustinian (1157-1217), distinguished between
the properties of the two ends of the lodestone, and gives in his De
Utensilibus what is perhaps the earliest reference to the mariner's
compass that we have. Albertus Magnus, the Dominican (1193-1230),
in his treatise De Mineralibus, enumerates different kinds of
natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly
attributed to them; the minstrel, Guyot de Provins, in a famous
satirical poem written about 1208, refers to the directive quality
of the lodestone and its use in navigation, as do also Cardinal de
Vitry in his Historia Orientalis (1215-1220); Brunetto Latini, poet,
orator and philosopher (the teacher of Dante), in his Tresor des
Sciences, a veritable library, written in Paris in 1260; Raymond
Lully, the enlightened Doctor, in his treatise, De Contemplatione,
begun in 1272; and Guido Guinicelli, the poet-priest of Bologna, who
died in 1276."
All of these writers, it may be said, with a single exception, were
clergymen, and some of them were very prominent ecclesiastics in their
time.