to as one of the great teachers of mankind and his work the "Almagest"
as one of the great contributions to human knowledge. The fact that he
represented a climax of astronomical development at Alexandria some
four centuries after the foundation of {83} that university, serves to
show how much that first modern university occupied itself for all the
centuries of its highest prestige, with physical science as well as
with mathematics. Astronomy, physics, especially hydrostatics and
mechanics, were all wonderfully developed. Generations of professors
had given themselves to research and to the publication of important
works quite as in the modern time, and Alexandria may well claim the
right to be placed beside any university for what it accomplished in
physical science, and rank high if not highest in the list of great
research institutions adding new knowledge to old, leading men across
the borderland of the unknown in science and furnishing that precious
incentive to growing youth to occupy itself with the scientific
problems of the world around it.
The most important part of the scientific work of the University of
Alexandria to my mind remains to be spoken of, and that is the medical
department. It is a well-known law in the history of medicine that,
whenever medical schools are attached to universities in such a way
that students who come to the medical department have been thoroughly
trained by preliminary studies and have such standards of scholarship
as obtain in genuine university work, then great progress in medicine
and in medical education is accomplished. This was eminently the case
at Alexandria. The departments of the arts, of linguistics and of
philosophy were gathered {84} around the great building known in Greek
as the Mouseion, a word that has come to us through the Latin under
the guise of Museum. This temple of the Muses contained collections of
various kinds and near it was situated the great library. Not far away
was the Serapeum, or Temple of Serapis, the Goddess of Life, around
which were centred the biological sciences, and close by was the
medical school. As teachers for this medical school some of the
greatest physicians of the time were secured by the first Ptolemy and
a great period in medical history began.
The practical wisdom guiding the Ptolemys in the organization of this
medical school will be best appreciated from the fact that they took
the first step by inviting two distinguished physicians, the products
of the two greatest medical schools of the time, to lay the
foundations at Alexandria. They were probably the best investigators
of their time and they had behind them fine traditions of research,
thorough observation and conservative reasoning and theorizing on
scientific subjects. Erasistratos was a disciple of Metrodoros, the
son-in-law of Aristotle. He had studied for a time under another great
teacher, Chrysippos of Cnidos. We are likely to know much more of Cos
than of Cnidos because of the reputation in the after time of
Hippocrates, whose name is so closely connected with Cos that the two
are almost invariably associated, but Cnidos was one of the great
university towns of the later Greek {85} civilization. Eudoxus the
astronomer, Ctesias the writer on Persian history, and Sostratos the
builder of the great lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the
world, the Pharos at Alexandria, were products of this university. Its
medical school was famous when Cos had somewhat declined, and
Chrysippos was one of the leading physicians of the world and one of
the acknowledged great teachers of medicine when Erasistratos studied
under him at Cnidos, and obtained that scientific training and
incentive to original research which was to prove so valuable to
Alexandria.
His colleague, Herophilos, was quite as distinguished as Erasistratos
and owed his training to the rival school of Cos. Whether it was
intentional or not to secure these two products of rival schools for
the healthy spirit of competition that would come from it, and because
they wanted to have at Alexandria the emulation that would naturally
be aroused by such a condition, is not known, but there can be no
doubt of the wisdom of the choice and of the foresight which dictated
it. Herophilos had studied medicine under Praxagoras, one of the
best-known successors of Hippocrates. While distinguished as a surgeon
he had more influence on medicine than almost any man of his time,
except possibly Erasistratos. He was, however, a great anatomist and,
above all, a zoologist who, according to tradition, had obtained his
knowledge of animals from the most {86} careful zootomy of literally
thousands of specimens. His fair fame is blackened by the other
tradition that he practised vivisection on human beings--criminals
being turned over to him for that purpose by the Ptolemys, who were
deeply interested in his researches. The traditions in this matter,
however, serve to confirm the idea of his zeal as an investigator and
his ardent labors in medical science. Tertullian declares that he
dissected at least 600 living persons. We know that he did much
dissection of human cadavers and there is question whether
Tertullian's statement was not gross exaggeration due to confusion
between dissection and vivisection.
Both of these men did some magnificent work upon the brain. This being
the first period in the history of humanity when human beings could be
dissected freely, it is not surprising that they should take up brain
anatomy with ardent devotion, in the hope to solve some of the many
human problems that seemed to centre in this complex organ. Before
this anatomy had been learned mainly from animals, and as human beings
differ most widely from animals by their brain, naturally, as soon as
the opportunity presented itself, anatomists gave themselves to
thorough work on this structure where so many discoveries were waiting
to be made. After the brain and nervous system the heart was studied,
and Erasistratos' description of its valves, of its general structure
and even of its physiology, show how much he {87} knew. To know
something of the work of these two anatomists is to see at once what
is accomplished in a university medical school where medical science,
and not the mere practice of medicine alone, is the object of teachers
and students. I have told the story of this in my address before the
graduates of the St. Louis Medical University Medical School, and here
I shall simply refer you to that. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: The details of what was accomplished in the Medical
Department at Alexandria were given to some extent at least in the
lecture in Brooklyn, but are omitted here in order to avoid
repetitions in the printed copy.]
Of course all these studies at the university could not be conducted
without laboratory equipment. Of itself the dissecting room is a
laboratory and until very recent years it was the only laboratory that
most of the medical schools had. The numerous experiments in
vivisection, if they really took place, required special arrangements
and could only be conducted in what we now call a laboratory of
physiology. This is not idle talk but represents the realities of the
situation. Other laboratories there must have been. It would be quite
impossible to conceive of a man like Archimedes carrying on his work,
especially of the application of mathematical principles to mechanics,
of the demonstration of mechanical principles themselves and of the
invention of the many interesting machines which he made, without what
we call laboratory facilities. The Ptolemys were {88} interested in
his work, they supplied him with a place to do it, many of his
advanced students at least must have been interested in this work so
that, as I see it, there was what we would now call a physical
laboratory in connection with his teaching at the University of
Alexandria.
What we know about the development of zoology under Erasistratos and
Herophilos would seem to indicate that there must have been such
special facilities for the investigation of zoological problems as we
would call a laboratory of physiology. A magnificent collection of
plants was made for the university and these were studied and
classified, and while we hear nothing of their dissection, there were
at least botanical rooms for methodical study, if not botanical
laboratories. Ptolemy's work represented the culmination of
astronomical information which had been gathered for several
centuries. This could only be brought together in what we would now
call an observatory and this represents another laboratory of physical
science. Our laboratory work, therefore, must have been anticipated to
a great extent. We must not forget that our university laboratories
are only a couple of generations old altogether and that they
represent a very recent development of educational work. It is
extremely interesting, therefore, to find them anticipated in germ at
least, if not in actuality, at the first modern university of which we
have sufficiently complete records to enable us to {89} appreciate
just the sort of work that was being done and the ways and modes of
its education.
I think that even this comparatively meagre description of the first
university of which we have knowledge makes it very clear that
Alexandria deserves the name of the First Modern University. It
resembled our own in so many ways that I, for one, find it impossible
to discover any essential difference between them. At Alexandria they
anticipated every phase of modern university education. Their
literature was studied from a scientific standpoint. They devoted
themselves to an overwhelming extent to the study of the physical
sciences and mathematics, their professors were inventors, developers
of practical applications of science, experts to whom appeal was made
when important scientific questions had to be settled, and their
teaching was done with demonstrations and a laboratory system very
like our own. Nothing that I know illustrates better the tendency of
human achievement not to represent advance but to occur in cycles than
the story of this first modern university. That is why I have tried to
tell it to you as an exquisite illustration of How Old the New Is in
Education.
{90}
{91}
MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES
{92}
"Qui ad pauca respiciunt faciliter pronuntiant."
--AN OLD PHILOSOPHER.
[Those who know little readily pronounce judgment.]
{93}
MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: The material for this address was originally gathered
for a lecture in a course on the History of Education delivered to
the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent's, some 500 in number;
teachers in the Catholic public schools of New York City, and for
corresponding lectures to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Kenwood.
The address was delivered substantially in its present form at the
Catholic Club of Cornell University, under the title "The Relations
of the Church to Science."]
Probably nothing is more surprising to any one who knows the history
of science and of scientific education than the attitude of mind of
the present generations, educated as they are mainly along scientific
lines, toward the supposed lack of interest of preceding generations
in science. Our scholars and professors seem to be almost universally
of the opinion that the last few generations are the first who ever
devoted themselves seriously to the study of science, or who, indeed,
were free enough from superstitions and persuasions and beliefs of
many kinds to give themselves up freely to scientific investigation.
In the light of what we know or, perhaps I should say, what we are
coming to know now with regard to the educational interests of the men
of the various times, this would be an amusing, if it were not an
amazing, presumption on our part. Over and over again in the world's
history men have been {94} interested in science, both in pure science
and in applied science, in the culture sciences and in the practical
sciences.
Apparently men forget that philosophy is science and ethics is science
and metaphysics is scientific and logic is science and there is a
science of language. Of course the protest that will be heard at once
is that what we now mean by science is physical science. Even taking
the word science in this narrower sense, however, how can people
forget that our mathematics comes to us from the old Greeks, that old
Greek contributions to medicine and, above all, to the scientific side
of it still remain valuable, that physical science, pure and applied,
developed wonderfully at the University of Alexandria, that there was
a beginning of chemistry and the great foundations of astronomy laid
in the long ago, and that men evidently were quite as much interested
in the problems of nature around them as they have been at any time:
Archimedes insisting that if he only had some place to rest his lever
he could move the world, inventing the screw pump, fashioning his
great burning-mirrors, and a little later Heron inventing the first
germ of the turbine engine, while all the time their colleagues and
contemporaries were developing the mathematics in connection with
them, are studying both pure and applied science. It is simply failure
to state in terms of the present what was accomplished in the past,
that has permitted people to retain {95} curious notions of the
absence of science in antiquity.
Probably most people would be quite ready to concede, and especially
after even a brief calling to their attention of some educational
facts, that the old Greeks did enjoy a scientific educational
development; it would probably even be admitted that the traditions of
science of various kinds from Egypt, from Chaldea, from Babylonia
point to previous eras of scientific development. They would probably
still insist, however, that there had been a long interval of utter
neglect of science lasting nearly 2,000 years and that our interest is
properly a resurrection of science-study after a long burial. They do
not even hesitate to blame the educational authorities of the interval
for their failure to occupy themselves with scientific ideas and are
prone to find reasons of various kinds to account for this failure. As
the Church was dominant in education during the Middle Ages this makes
a ready scapegoat, and so we have heard much of the repression of
scientific study by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the determined
effort made to keep men from inquiring about the problems of nature
around them, because this would lead them to think for themselves and
have doubts with regard to faith. Indeed this attitude of mind in the
history of science is so usual that it is a commonplace, and men who
are supposed to be scholars talk off-handedly of direct Church
opposition to science.
{96}
There is no doubt at all that the Church was the commanding influence
in education during the Middle Ages. Whatever was studied was taken up
because the Church authorities were interested in it. Whatever was not
studied was absent from the curriculum because of their lack of
interest. While study was magnificently encouraged there were many
subjects, though not near so many as is often thought, that were
repressed. The Church must certainly be held responsible in every way
for the teaching of the Middle Ages, both as regards its extent and
its limitations. The charters of the universities were granted by the
Popes. The universities themselves usually were cathedral schools
which had developed, and to which had become attached various graduate
departments. The ecclesiastical authorities were in control of them.
The rector of the university was usually the archdeacon of the
cathedral or the chancellor of the diocese. The professors at the
universities were practically all of them in clerical orders, and the
great body of the students were clerics, in the sense that they had
assumed at least minor orders and were supposed to be in preparation
for a clerical life. This was, indeed, the one sure way to secure
exemption from the military duties of the time and to prevent
interference of various kinds by the civil power with the leisure
necessary for study. No man had any essential rights in the Middle
Ages except such as were conferred on him by some organization {97} to
which he belonged, and the clerical order was particularly powerful.
Now the interesting phase of the education afforded by these
universities under ecclesiastical control with clerical students and
professors constituting the large majority of members, with the
influence of the religious orders paramount for centuries, is that it
was entirely scientific in character and largely occupied with the
physical sciences, though the culture sciences formed the basis of it.
Huxley, though he is surely the last man of recent times who would be
suspected for a moment of exaggerating the scientific significance of
mediaeval education, recognized this fact very well and stated it very
emphatically. In his Inaugural Address on Universities Actual and
Ideal, delivered as Rector of Aberdeen University after discussing the
subject with evident careful preparation, he said:
"The scholars of the mediaeval universities seem to have studied
grammar, logic and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy,
theology and music. Thus, their work, however imperfect and faulty,
judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face
with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For
these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes
it may be in caricature, what we now call philosophy, mathematical
and physical science and art. {98} _And I doubt if the curriculum of
any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension of
what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does."_
(Italics mine.)
Of course Huxley says, "sometimes it may be in caricature." We must
not forget, however, that first even Huxley hesitates to say that it
is caricature, for he knows how easy it is to be mistaken in our
estimation of the true significance of an old-time mode of thought,
and then, too, he knew comparatively how little we were sure of the
real thoughts and conclusions of these men of the olden time because
of defective sympathy and even defective knowledge of their work. Our
knowledge in this matter has greatly increased since his time. As a
matter of fact, the more we know about these old masters and the
mediaeval universities the less are we likely to think of their work
as lacking in seriousness in any sense. The quarter of a century that
has elapsed since Huxley so cogently urged this at Aberdeen has
brought many facts unknown to us before and has shown us what good
work, even in the physical sciences, was accomplished in these
old-time universities.
For instance, nothing is more common in the mouths of certain kinds of
scholars than the expressions of wonder as to why men did not study
nature more assiduously before our time. Here is a magnificent open
book full of the most alluring lessons which any one may study for
himself, and that somehow it is presumed men neglected {99} down to
our time. We are the age of nature students, and preceding times are
looked at askance for having neglected the opportunities that lay so
invitingly open to them in this subject. It has always been a wonder
to me how people dare to talk this way. Our old literatures are full
of observations on nature. In my book on "The Popes and Science" I
take Dante as a typical product of the universities of the thirteenth
century, and show without any difficulty as it seems to me, that there
is no poet of the modern time who can draw figures from nature which
demand even a detailed knowledge of nature with so much confidence as
Dante. He knows the most intimate details about the birds, about many
animals, about the ways of flowers, about children, describes some
experiments in science, has a wide knowledge of astronomy and in
general is familiar with nature quite as much if not more than any
modern writer not _ex professo_ a naturalist. He describes the
metamorphosis of insects, how the ants communicate with one another,
knows the secrets of the bees and exhibits wide knowledge of the
secrets of bird life.
The presumption that people did not study nature in the olden time is
quite unjustified. They did not write long books about trivial
subjects of nature-study. They did not conclude that because they were
seeing something for the first time, that that was the first time in
the world's history it had ever been seen. They were gentle, {100}
kindly scholars who assumed that others had eyes and saw too, and as
fortunately there was no printing press there was not that hurried
rushing into print, with superficial observations and still more
superficial conclusions, which has characterized so much of our recent
literature of nature-study and that has been so well dubbed "nature
faking." Of course we have had faking of the same kind in nearly
everything else: we have history faking in our supposed historical
romances, science faking in our pseudo-science, science-history faking
in our ready presumption that the men of the olden time could not have
had our interests, and, above all--may I now say it?--in our cheap
conclusion that there must have been some reason for their lack of
interest in science, and then the assumption without anything further,
that it must have been because of the Church.
Just as soon as there is question of there having been any serious
scientific study during the Middle Ages, in the sense of observations
in physical science, investigation of the physical phenomena of nature
and the drawing of conclusions from them and the evolving of laws,
there are a large number of people who consider themselves very well
informed, who will at once object that this must be quite absurd,
since at this time Lord Chancellor Bacon had not as yet laid down the
great foundations of the physical sciences in his discussion of
inductive reasoning. I have already {101} ventured to suggest, in the
address on "The First Modern University," how utterly ridiculous any
such notion is. I have quoted Lord Macaulay and Huxley as ridiculing
those who entertained such an idea. Here I may be permitted to recur
to the subject by quotations from the same authorities. I have often
found that anything I myself said in this matter was at once
considered as quite incredible, since my feelings were entirely too
favorable toward the Middle Ages and then my religious affiliations
are somehow supposed to unfit me for scientific thinking. Fortunately
Macaulay and Huxley have expressed themselves in this matter even more
vigorously than I would be likely to, and so I may simply quote them.
As Lord Macaulay wrote in his well-known essay:
"The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this, that he invented
a new method of arriving at truth, which method is called induction,
and that he detected some fallacy in the syllogistic reasoning which
had been in vogue before his time. This notion is as well founded as
that of the people who, in the Middle Ages, imagined that Virgil was
a great conjurer. Many who are far too well informed to talk such
extravagant nonsense entertain what we think incorrect notions as to
what Bacon really effected in this matter."
Still more apposite is what Professor Huxley has to say. Discoursing
on the phenomena of {102} organic nature, after warning his auditors
not to suppose that scientific investigation is "some kind of modern
black art," he adds: "I say that you might easily gather this
impression from the manner in which many persons speak of scientific
inquiry, or talk about inductive and deductive philosophy, or the
principles of the 'Baconian philosophy.' To hear people talk about the
great Chancellor--and a very great man he certainly was--you would
think that it was he who had invented science, and that there was no
such thing as sound reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth.