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The Experimental Method in the Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
Extract
It is probable that since the beginning of civilisation there has never been a high culture without some kind of systematic study of matter. The Egyptians and Babylonians were metallurgists, architects, physicians, astronomers and mathematicians. The Greeks inherited some part of their tradition and transformed it from technique to philosophy. A scientific world-view emerged; theoretical systems of the sciences and natural histories, good and bad, expressed this view and the facts which it attempted to explain; and the corpus of Greek scientific writings remained as the chief inspiration and fountain of science until the seventeenth century, nor is its influence extinct to-day. Between 150 b.c. and 450 a.d. Greek science gradually died, but the record of it, preserved in Greek manuscripts, remained known to those who spoke that tongue. Thus in the sixth and seventh centuries there was considerable philosophical and scientific activity in Byzantium, Syria and Persia, and this later inspired the culture of Islam; but since very little had been translated into Latin, the knowledge of science in the Western world sunk to a low ebb.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1945 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
1
The substance of a paper read at the Newman Association Congress, held at Ampleforth Abbey, August, 1944.
References
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8 The loadstone or natural magnet.
9 Those of which the mechanism is not obvious to the eye or reason.
10 Experimentum. Experience, trial—a wider term than our present experiment.
11 De Mineralibus, II. tr. 3, c. i.
12 De Meteoris, III, tr. 2, c. 12.