Old-Time Makers of Medicine — Ap. 2 Science at the Medieval Universities, part 1/2

SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES[35]

With the growth of interest in science and in nature study in our own day, one of the expressions that is probably oftenest heard is surprise that the men of preceding generations and especially university men did not occupy themselves more with the world around them and with the phenomena that are so tempting to curiosity.

Science is usually supposed to be comparatively new and nature study only a few generations old.

Men are supposed to have been so much interested in book knowledge and in speculations and theories of many kinds, that they neglected the realities of life around them while spinning fine webs of theory.

Previous generations, of course, have indulged in theory, but then our own generation is not entirely free from that amusing occupation.

Nothing could well be less true, however, than that the men of preceding generations were not interested in science even in the sense of physical science, or that nature study is new, or that men were not curious and did not try to find out all they could about the phenomena of the world around them.

The medieval universities and the school-men who taught in them have been particularly blamed for their failure to occupy themselves with realities instead of with speculation.

We are coming to recognize their wonderful zeal for education, the large numbers of students they attracted, the enthusiasm of their students, since they made so many handwritten copies of the books of their masters, the devotion of the teachers themselves, who wrote at much greater length than do our professors even now and on the most abstruse subjects, so that it is all the more surprising to think they should have neglected science.

The thought of our generation in the matter, however, is founded entirely on an assumption.

Those who know anything about the writers of the Middle Ages at first hand are not likely to think of them as neglectful of science even in our sense of the term.

Those who know them at second hand are, however, very sure in the matter.

The assumption is due to the neglect of history that came in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

We have many other similar assumptions because of the neglect of many phases of mental development and applied science at this time.

For instance, most of us are very proud of our modern hospital development and think of this as a great humanitarian evolution of applied medical science.

We are very likely to think that this is the first time in the world's history that the building of hospitals has been brought to such a climax of development, and that the houses for the ailing in the olden time were mere refuges, prone to become death traps and at most makeshifts for the solution of the problem of the care of the ailing poor.

This is true for the hospitals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is not true at all for the hospitals of the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of Nursing"[36] have called attention to the fact that the lowest period in hospital development is during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Hospitals were little better than prisons, they had narrow windows, were ill provided with light and air and hygienic arrangements, and in general were all that we should imagine old-time hospitals to be.

The hospitals of the earlier time, however, had fine high ceilings, large windows, abundant light and air, excellent arrangements for the privacy of patients, and in general were as worthy of the architects of the earlier times as the municipal buildings, the cathedrals, the castles, the university buildings, and every other form of construction that the late medieval centuries devoted themselves to.

The trouble with those who assume that there was no study of science and practically no attention to nature study in the Middle Ages is that they know nothing at all at first hand about the works of the men who wrote in the medieval period.

They have accepted declarations with regard to the absolute dependence of the scholastics on authority, their almost divine worship of Aristotle, their utter readiness to accept authoritative assertions provided they came with the stamp of a mighty name, and then their complete lack of attention to observation and above all to experiment.

Nothing could well be more ridiculous than this ignorant assumption of knowledge with regard to the great teachers at the medieval universities.

Just as soon as there is definite knowledge of what these great teachers wrote and taught, not only does the previous mood of blame for them for not paying much more attention to science and nature at once disappear, but it gives place to the heartiest admiration for the work of these great thinkers.

It is easy to appreciate, then, what Professor Saintsbury said in a recent volume on the thirteenth century: And there have even 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.

Three men were the great teachers in the medieval universities at their prime.

They have been read and studied with interest ever since.

They wrote huge tomes, but men have pored over them in every generation.

They were Albertus Magnus, the teacher of the other two, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon.

All three of them were together at the University of Paris shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century.

Anyone who wants to know anything about the attitude of mind of the medieval universities, their professors and students, and of all the intellectual world of the time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the books of these men.

Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence.

These constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the development of science at this time.

It is extremely interesting to see the attitude of these men with regard to authority.

In Albert's tenth book (of his "Summa"), in which he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed; for in these matters experience alone can be of certainty."

In his impressive Latin phrase "_experimentum solum certificat in talibus_."

With regard to the study of nature in general he was quite as emphatic.

He was a theologian as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on "The Heavens and the Earth" he declared that "in studying nature we have not to inquire 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 inquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass."

[37] Just as striking quotations on this subject might be made from Roger Bacon.

Indeed, Bacon was quite impatient with the scholars around him who talked over-much, did not observe enough, depended to excess on authority, and in general did as mediocre scholars always do, made much fuss on second-hand information--plus some filmy speculations of their own.

Friar Bacon, however, had one great pupil whose work he thoroughly appreciated because it exhibited the opposite qualities.

This was Petrus--we have come to know him as Peregrinus--whose observations on magnetism have excited so much attention in recent years with the republications of his epistle on the subject.

It is really a monograph on magnetism written in the thirteenth century.

Roger Bacon's opinion of it and of its author furnishes us the best possible index of his attitude of mind towards observation and experiment in science.

I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy for he does not care for the discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom.

Therefore what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man contemplates in their brilliancy _because he is a master of experiment_.

Hence, he knows all of natural science whether pertaining to medicine and alchemy, or to matters celestial or terrestrial.

He has worked diligently in the smelting of ores as also in the working of minerals; he is thoroughly acquainted with all sorts of arms and implements used in military service and in hunting, besides which he is skilled in agriculture and in the measurement of lands.

It is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name.

Moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he wished to obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns who would honor and enrich him.

Similar expressions might readily be quoted from Thomas Aquinas, but his works are so easy to secure and his whole attitude of mind so well known, that it scarcely seems worth while taking space to do so.

Aquinas is still studied very faithfully in many universities, and within the last few years one of his great text-books of philosophy has been replaced in the curriculum of Oxford University, in which it occupied a prominent position in the long ago, as a work that may be offered for examination in the department of philosophy.

It is with regard to him particularly that there has been the greatest revulsion of feeling in recent years and a recognition of the fact that here was a great thinker familiar with all that was known in the physical sciences, and who had this knowledge constantly in his mind when he drew his conclusions with regard to philosophical and theological questions.

It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for the high estimation in which they held Aristotle.

Occasionally even yet one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent devotion to Aristotle.

No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the history of philosophy and science.

To know Aristotle well is to think of him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed.

We do not need to go back to the Middle Ages to be confirmed in that opinion.

Modern scientists who know their science well, but who also know Aristotle well, and who are ardent worshippers at his shrine, are not hard to find.

Romanes, the great English biologist of the end of the nineteenth century, said: "It appears to me that there can be no question that Aristotle stands forth not only as the greatest figure in antiquity but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon this earth."

Before Romanes, George H. Lewes, in his interesting monograph in the history of thought, "Aristotle, a Chapter in the History of Science," is quite as complimentary to the great Greek thinker.

We may say that Lewes was by no means partial to Aristotle.

Anything but inclined to accept authority as of value in philosophy, he had been rendered impatient by the fact that so much of the history of philosophy was dominated by Aristotle, and it was only that the panegyric was forced from him by careful study of all that the Stagirite wrote that he said: "History gazed on him with wonder.

His intellect was piercing and comprehensive;

his attainments surpassed those of every philosopher; his influence has been excelled only by the founders of religion ...

his vast and active intelligence for twenty centuries held the world in awe."

Professor Osborn, whose scholarly study of the theory of evolution down the ages "From the Greeks to Darwin" rather startled the world of science by showing not only how old was a theory of evolution, but how frequently it had been stated and how many of them anticipated phases of our own thought in the matter, pays a high compliment to the great Greek scientist.

He says: "Aristotle clearly states and rejects a theory of the origin of adaptive structures in animals altogether similar to that of Darwin."

He then quotes certain passages from Aristotle's "Physics," and says: "These passages seem to contain absolute evidence that Aristotle had substantially the modern conception of the evolution of life, from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to the most perfect forms, and that even in these he believed that evolution was incomplete for they were progressing to higher forms."

Modern French scientists are particularly laudatory in their estimation of Aristotle.

The group of biologists, Buffon, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and others who called world attention to French science and its attainments about a century ago, are all of them on record in highest praise of Aristotle.

Cuvier said: "I cannot read his work without being ravished with astonishment.

It is impossible to conceive how a single man was able to collect and compare the multitude of facts implied in the rules and aphorisms contained in this book."

It is possible, however, to get opinions ardently laudatory of Aristotle from the serious students of any nation, provided only they know their Aristotle.

Sir William Hamilton, the Scotch philosopher, said: "Aristotle's seal is upon all the sciences, his speculations have determined those of all subsequent thinkers."

Hegel, the German philosophic writer, is not less outspoken in his praise: "Aristotle penetrated the whole universe of things and subjected them to intelligence."

Kant, who is often said to have influenced our modern thinking more than any other in recent generations, has his compliment for Aristotle.

It relates particularly to that branch of philosophy with which Kant had most occupied himself.

The Koenigsberg philosopher said: "Logic since Aristotle, like Geometry since Euclid, is a finished science."

I do not want to tire you or I could quote many other authorities who proclaim Aristotle the genius of the race.

They would include poets like Dante and Goethe, scholars like Cicero and Anthon, literary men like Lessing and Reich and many others.

The scholars of the Middle Ages, far from condemnation for their devotion to Aristotle, deserve the highest praise for it.

If they had done nothing else but appreciate Aristotle as our greatest modern scholars have done, that of itself would proclaim their profound scholarship.

The medieval writers are often said to have been uncritical in their judgment, but in their lofty estimation of Aristotle they displayed the finest possible critical judgment.

On the contrary, the generations who made much of the opportunity to minimize medieval scholarship because of its worship at the shrine of Aristotle, must themselves fall under the suspicion at least of either not knowing Aristotle or of not thinking deeply about the subjects with regard to which he wrote.

For in all the world's history the rule has been that whenever men have thought deeply about a subject and know what Aristotle has written with regard to that subject, they have the liveliest admiration for the great Greek thinker.

This is true for philosophy, logic, metaphysics, politics, ethics, dramatics, but it is also quite as true for physical science.

He lacked our knowledge, though not nearly to the degree that is usually thought, and he had a marvellous accumulation of information, but he had a breadth of view and a thoroughness of appreciation with a power of penetration that make his opinions worth while knowing even on scientific subjects in our enlightened age.

As for the supposed swearing by Aristotle, in the sense of literally accepting his opinions without daring to examine them critically, which is so constantly asserted to have been the habit of the medieval scholars and teachers, it is extremely difficult in the light of the expressions which we have from them, to understand how this false impression arose.

Aristotle they thoroughly respected.

They constantly referred to his works, but so has every thinking generation ever since.

Whenever he had made a declaration they would not accept the contradiction of it without a good reason, but whenever they had good reasons, Aristotle's opinion was at once rejected without compunction.

Albertus Magnus, for instance, said: "Whoever believes that Aristotle was a God must also believe that he never erred, but if we believe that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to err just as we are."

A number of direct contradictions of Aristotle we have from Albert.

A well-known one is that with regard to Aristotle's assertion that lunar rainbows appeared only twice in fifty years.

Albert declared that he himself had seen two in a single year.

Indeed, it seems very clear that the whole trend of thought among the great teachers of the time was away from the acceptance of scientific conclusions on authority unless there was good evidence for them available.

They were quite as impatient as the scientists of our time with the constant putting forward of Aristotle as if that settled a scientific question.

Roger Bacon wanted the Pope to forbid the study of Aristotle because his works were leading men astray from the study of science, his authority being looked upon as so great that men did not think for themselves but accepted his assertions.

Smaller men are always prone to do this, and indeed it constitutes one of the difficulties in the way of advance in scientific knowledge at all times, as Roger Bacon himself pointed out.

These are the sort of expressions that are to be expected from Friar Bacon from what we know of other parts of his work.

His "Opus Tertium" was written at the request of Pope Clement IV, because the Pope had heard many interesting accounts of what the great thirteenth-century teacher and experimenter was doing at the University of Oxford, and wished to learn for himself the details of his work.

Bacon starts out with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance.

These are, "first, trust in inadequate authority; second, that force of custom which leads men to accept without properly questioning what has been accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the assertions of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance behind the parade of superficial knowledge, so that we are afraid to say I do not know."

Professor Henry Morley, a careful student of Bacon's writings, said with regard to these expressions of Bacon: No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet of students, although six centuries have passed.

We still make sheep-walks of second, third and fourth, and fiftieth hand references to authority; still we are the slaves of habit, still we are found following too frequently the untaught crowd, still we flinch from the righteous and wholesome phrase "I do not know" and acquiesce actively in the opinion of others that we know what we appear to know.

In his "Opus Majus" Bacon had previously given abundant evidence of his respect for the experimental method.

There is a section of this work which bears the title "Scientia Experimentalis."

In this Bacon affirms that "without experiment nothing can be adequately known.

An argument may prove the correctness of a theory, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt, nor will the mind repose in the clear view of truth unless it finds its way by means of experiment."

To this he later added in his "Opus Tertium": "The strongest argument proves nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience.

Experimental science is the queen of sciences, and the goal of all speculation."

It is no wonder that Dr. Whewell, in his "History of the Inductive Sciences," should have been unstinted in his praise of Roger Bacon's work and writings.

In a well-known passage he says of the "Opus Majus": Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus" is the encyclopedia and "Novum Organon" of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful with regard to its wonderful scheme and to the special treatises by which the outlines of the plans are filled up.

The professed object of the work is to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet almost untouched, and to animate men in the undertaking of a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered.

In the development of this plan all the leading portions of science are expanded in the most complete shape which they had at that time assumed;

and improvements of a very wide and striking kind are proposed in some of the principal branches of study.

Even if the work had no leading purposes it would have been highly valuable as a treasure of the most solid knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even if it had contained no such details it would have been a work most remarkable for its general views and scope.

As a matter of fact the universities of the Middle Ages, far from neglecting science, were really scientific universities.

Because the universities of the early nineteenth century occupied themselves almost exclusively with languages and especially formed students' minds by means of classical studies, men in our time seem to be prone to think that such linguistic studies formed the main portion of the curriculum of the universities in all the old times and particularly in the Middle Ages.

The study of the classic languages, however, came into university life only after the Renaissance.

Before that the undergraduates of the universities had occupied themselves almost entirely with science.

It was quite as much trouble to introduce linguistic studies into the old universities in the Renaissance time to replace science, as it was to secure room for science by pushing out the classics in the modern time.

Indeed the two revolutions in education are strikingly similar when studied in detail.

Men who had been brought up on science before the Renaissance were quite sure that that formed the best possible means of developing the mind.

In the early nineteenth century men who had been formed on the classics were quite as sure that science could not replace them with any success.