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A Strategy for Medieval Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
Science and the humanities share the same kit of working tools, called the world's literature. While the author of this article deals mainly with the scientific and mathematical literature, the reader probably gravitates towards some other branches, but such distinctions were hardly made in the Middle Ages. The American philosopher, Wallace Stevens, in his book The Necessary Angel remarks that at the time of Aristotle, the Greek language had no word to signify literature. The reason is surely that literature had long since been too universal an element in Greece to require a name. We have no name for the smell of air. This all-pervading power of literature is apparent already two generations before Aristotle, when Socrates made his defence against leading the youth of Athens towards atheism. Plato's Apology tells us how Socrates taunted his accuser: “Have you such a low opinion of the judges, that you fancy them so illiterate as not to know these doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras which are full of them? And so, my word, the youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when they can be bought in the book-market for one drachma at most…” (a coin today worth 1.4 pence!).
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- Copyright © 1981 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
Footnotes
*
Substance of a lecture given to students of Literature at Essex University.
References
Notes and References
1 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel, Essays on Reality and the Imagi nation, London, Faber and Faber, 1954, p. 43. (First Edn. 1942).
2 Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), brought the natural philosophy of Epicurus to the notice of the founders of modern physics and chemistry:
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• The mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker (Space and Spirit, London, Th. Nelson and Sons, 1946), himself a sincere "neo-Thomist," wrote: "Gassendi… reverted to the teaching of the Greek atomists…" and: "The importance of Gassendi is due to the fact that his principles were adopted by Newton, and thus became fundamental in classical physics." See also J.E. McGuire, Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 3, 1966/7, p. 206-248.
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• Robert Boyle (1627-1691), the "father of chemistry," forcefully expressed his indebtedness to Gassendi's summary review of the philosophy of Epicurus (see pp. XCVII-CCLXI of P. Gassendi, Epcuri Philosophia, Vol. III, Lyon, Bar-bier, 1649). Boyle acknowledges that this work, and Descartes's Principles of Philosophy, might have enriched his own essays "with divers truths, which they now want, and have explicated divers things much better than I fear I have done." (R. Boyle, The Works, Vol. I, London, 1772, p. 302).
3 G. Carducci, Prose, Bologna, N. Zanichelli Editor, 1922, p. 1152.
4 C. de Antonellis, De' principi di diritto penale che si contengono nella Divina Commedia, Città di Castello, S. Lapi, 1894.
5 V. Botta, in Appendix 2 to F. Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, London, Hodder & Stoughton, Vol. 2, 1874, writes: "But as a promoter of freedom in philosophy as well as in political science, Dante (1265-1321) stands preeminent in the history of his country." (Cf. ref. 74 below).
6 G. Galilei (Le Opere, Florence, G. Barbèra, 1899) calls Dante an architect of sublimest judgment in the opening paragraph of his first lecture on Dante's Inferno.
7 C.O.F. Mossotti (in a letter dated 9-7-1874) published in Coll. di Opuscoli Danteschi, Città di Castello, Ed. Passerini, S. Lapi, Vol. 6.10.
8 F. D'Ovidio, Atti Reale Acad. de scienze mor. e polit., 26, 275 (1892).
9 Louis Bréhier, L'Église et l'Orient au Moyen Age, Libr. Paris, V. Lecoffre, 1921, p. 11.
10 M.A. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers, London and Edinburgh, Gall and Inglis, 1913, p. 5.
11 Aurelius Augustinus, Confessions, Book VIII, Chapter VII.
12 Dante Alighieri, Convivio, Book II, Chapter XII.
13 Benevenutus de Rambaldis de Imola, Commentum super Dantis Alligherij Comoediam (written about 1376), Vol. 1., G. Barbèra, Florence, 1887, 178, (Com ment on Inf. III, 141).
14 See also Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae et de disciplina scholarium, ca. 1514 (British Library Cat. 1502/129) where the anonymous commentator begins by re-calling Aquinas's opening.
15 Seneca, Letter VIII to Lucilius.
16 G. Verbeke, L'évolution de la Doctrine du Pneuma. Du stoïcisme à St. Augustin, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1945.
17 A. del Gaudio, Archeion (Rome), 6, 121-138, 1925.
18 R. Bacon, Opus Majus (1267-8). Part I, Chapter IX: "The Blessed Je rome… was called a corrupter of Scripture and a forger, and a sower of heresies. and in his own day was overwhelmed and unable to publish his works…" (translated from the Latin by R.B. Burke).
19 Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae (ca. 524), I.IV, 28: "Hence my grievous and irreconcilable disagreements with corrupt men, and—what freedom of conscience holds as its own—namely, in the interest of justice, always to spurn the hatred of the powerful."
20 Dante Alighieri, Purg. XX, 69, cf. D. Clemente, Napoli e San Tommaso, Naples, Accattoncelli, 1873, p. 32: "all the biographers of the Saint (sc. Thomas), and the writers of that time, agree…" that Charles of Anjou poisoned him or had him poisoned. But this accusation could now only be tested, if at all, by reference to primary sources.
21 See Abelard's Historia Calamitatum in J.T. Muckle, Medieval Studies, Vol. XII, 1950, pp. 195, 210.
22 Abu Mohammed Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Hazm, El collar de la paloma, Spanish by Garcia Gomez, Madrid, Soc. de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1952; "Though you burn the paper, you cannot burn what it contains, because I carry it in my heart."
23 Seneca, Epistle 88: "Safer is memory, which has no external substrate."
24 Philip a Limborch, The History of the Inquisition, (transl. by Samuel Chandler), London, J. Gray, 1731, Vol. II, p. 113.
25 Quoted by E. Massa, Ruggero Bacone, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Lettera tura, 1955, p. 12.
26 A. Augustinus, The City of God, Book 22, Ch. XIII.
27 Ibid. Ch. XX.
28 Migne, Patrolog. Lat. 33, col. 431; 111.
29 Migne, Patrolog. Lat. 23, col. 773, where Jerome writes e.g. "But as we do not have such a diversity of vowels (sc. as in Hebrew), we are content with a simple choice."
30 Ibid. col. 1211.
31 A. Cruden, Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testament, London, William Tegg, 1863.
32 Olaf Lagercrantz, Von der Hölle zum Paradies (transl. from the Swedish by G. Jänicke). Insel-Verlag, 1964, p. 79.
33 See Benvenuto da Imola in ref. 13 Vol. 1, Inf. X, p. 346: "infernum viventium," and pp. 37/8: "lo'nferno… idest mundum" (the Inferno… i.e. the World).
34 H. Ley: Geschichte der Aufklärung und des Atheismus, Berlin, Deutscher Vlg. der Wiss., Vol. II/1, 1970, p. 209.
35 A.F. Mehren, Etudes sur la Philosophie d'Averroës, Louvain, 1888; Aver roes's Tahafut al-Tahafut, transl. S. van den Bergh, Oxford University Press, 1954, Vol. 1, p. 360.
36 R. Bacon, Opus Majus, translated by R.B. Burke, Part 1, Ch. X. This passage should be compared with the text to note (25).
37 Cf. A. Dyroff, Aurelius Augustinus, Eds. M. Grabmann and J. Mousbach, Festschrift d. Görresgesellschaft, Köln, 1930, p. 15 ss.
38 Sir James Jeans, The Growth of Physical Science, Cambridge University Press, 1950, p. 111. This passage should be contrasted with that cited under ref. 36 above from Roger Bacon, whose vision Jeans described (ibid. p. 124) as having "ever been restricted by theological blinkers."
39 In Par. X, 137-9, Thomas introduces to Dante "the eternal light of Siger who reduced enviable truths to syllogisms." Dante was in his teens when Siger was murdered by a cleric.
40 P. Mandonnet, O.P., Siger de Brabant et l'Averroïsme latin au XIIIe siècle, Librairie de l'Université, 1899, p. 253.
41 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Rome, Forzanus et S., 1894, I, Qu. CXIII, 7 (cf. Revelation, 2, 1, 8, 12).
42 Ibid. Qu. CVI, 1.
43 See Opera Omnia Divi Thomas Aquinatis, Paris, L. Vivès, 1880, Vol. 33 & 34.
44 Vol. VI of ref. 41 above.
45 Inf. X, 118-119. Dante's best friend was the leader of the Epicurean sect in Florence, Guido Cavalcanti. See also note 33, and text to which it refers.
46 In the letter to Herodotus in Diogenes Laertius's Life of Epicurus, having explained that compounds are composed of atoms, Epicurus continues: "The latter are indivisible and immutable, or else everything would disappear into non-existence; besides, during the dissolution of compounds the atoms resist by being impenetrable by their nature, and as such afford no possibility of destruction."
47 i) I. Qu. L., Art. V: "…I answer by saying that necessarily angels are incorruptible by their nature."
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ii) Qu. LII. Art. III: "I answer by saying that two angels cannot simultaneously be in the same place."
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iii) Qu. LIII, Art. I. (Ad primum): "but the angel is indivisible."
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iv) Immutability of the angel is involved in the subtle discussion of motion in question LIII, Art. II, III. In Qu. IX Art. II, Thomas circumvents Augustine's embarrassing claim that only God is immutable thus: "Good angels… have immutability of choice, through divine power, yet there remains in them mutabil ity of location." (Epicurus's atoms are mobile!).
48 Reference 43, Entry Angelus, number 86.
49 Newton rejects, in the fourth sentence of his Principia, the assumption of a "medium which pervades the interstices of the parts of bodies" (cf. ref. 2).
50 The avoidance of a medium, notwithstanding the abhorrence of "action at a distance," underlies the application of the tensor calculus to physics by Einstein and by Weyl, and the modern compromise notion of a "field" of force.
51 Gottfried von Strassburg, Werke, Vol. 1, Tristan and Isolde, ed. F.H. von der Hagen, Breslau, J. Max and Co., 1823 line 4693. (Cf. The Tristan and Isolde of Gottfried von Strassburg, transl. E.H. Zeydel, Princeton, Univ. Press, 1948). This contribution to the evolving legend, written about 1210, is still far from its swan song at Bayreuth: Gottfried's Tristan plays chess and teaches Isolde Latin…
52 Dante Alighieri, De Vulg. El. II I and II, IV.
53 Ref. 44, p. 79.
54 Ibid. Vol. 1, Qu. L., IV.
55 G.W. Leibniz, letter to John Bernoulli, 12-8-1702, in Leibnizens mathe matische Schriften, Ed. C.I. Gerhardt, Halle, E.W. Schmidt, 1855 Vol. 3.
56 K.J. Grau, Abh. zur Philos. und ihrer Geschichte, 39, Ed. B. Erdmann, Halle, M. Niemeyer, 1916. Grau lists earlier writers who had noticed this trick in Leibniz.
57 Die Metaphysik des Averroes, transl. from Arabic and explained by Max Horten, Abh. zur Philos. und ihrer Gesch., Ed. B. Erdmann, Halle, M. Niemeyer, 1912, p. 14.
58 Ref. 44, p. 77.
59 Par. III, 29; VI, 5; XXIX, 76.
60 Aristotle, Phys. I (A) 192a.
61 Galen, Peri Spermatos, Book II, Ch. 2; in Medicorum Graecorum Opera. ed. D.C. Kühn, Leipzig, C. Cnobloch, Vol. 4, 1822, p. 611.
62 G.W. Leibniz, third letter to Clarke, 1715.
63 Ref. 41, I, Qu. LVIII, Art. 1.
64 R. Allers in Th. Aquinas, De ente et essentia, (1252 or 3), in German-Latin edition, ed. R. Allers, Thomas-Verlag, Vienna, J. Hegner, 1936, p. 10.
65 Index Thomisticus, R. Busa, S.I., (ed.), Milan, Cartiere Binda, 1971, Vol. I.
66 Ref. 41, III, Qu. 2, Art. 5.
67 C. du Plessis d'Argentre, Collectio Judiciorum etc., Paris, A. Cailleau, 1728, Vol. I, (pp. 180-1). For angelus, Tempier skilfully substituted intelligentia, and skilfully defined "intelligences" as "separated substances," but his readers knew (as we can ascertain from modern Dante dictionaries) that both of these terms meant angels Idib. p. 215: Gaufridus.
68 See R. Gomer, Field Emission and Field Ionization, Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 32: why sharp needle-point necessary; p. 112: the motions of atoms on the needle-point filmed.
69 J.N. Riddel, The Clairvoyant Eye, The Poetry and Poetics of Wallace Stevens, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1965, p. 4.
70 W. Stevens, Collected Poems, London, Faber and Faber, 1955, p. 192.
71 Ref. 43, Entry Angelus, number 119.
72 A. Ginsberg, Howl and other poems, San Francisco, City Light Books, 1956.
73 See A. Ginsberg, Empty Mirrors, New York, Totem Press and Corinth Books, 1961.
74 Convivio, IV., Ch. 7: "How great is my undertaking in this song, to try and weed at last a field so overgrown with clover, as that of public opinion, after its long neglect by our culture." It subsequently took 200 years for Italian writers to accept the meaning of cultura in Dante's metaphor.
75 Dante Alighieri, Purg. XIX, 19-35.
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