Science and Medieval Thought

22

Both Albert and Aquinas were inconsistent. Hauréau points out that St Thomas was a vitalist in physics, an animist in metaphysics, a nominalist in philosophy, and a realist in theology. “Il a cherché à reconcilier des morts (i.e. Plato and Aristotle) qui, toute leur vie, se sont contredits.” But even sceptics contradict themselves; and it is fair to add that St Thomas pushed universals back to immanence in the Divine mind. For Plato the ideas are thoughts of universal mind; for Aristotle God, or Nature by its thoughts or plans determines the lines of phenomena: thus Plato and Aristotle were more alike than Thomas knew, or Hauréau admits. There was no such thing of course as The Scholastic Philosophy, of which I read again but the other day in a modern work. Scholasticism is the very various teaching of the schools of the xi-xvth centuries; though its general tendency was to search rather into the origin and nature than into the functions of being. The philosophy of the thirteenth century on the whole was eclectic; – though perhaps eclectic by confusion rather than by reconciliation. The rule of authority prevented an appreciation of the relative values of opinions; the recognised authorities were equally true, and had to be dovetailed together somehow. Critical interpretation had not begun.

23

The objection should not lie against hair splitting, for thought cannot be too penetrating; but against the splitting of imaginary hairs.

24

M. Charles Jourdain thus describes the procession of Rector, doctors and disciples of the University of Paris at the beginning of the fourteenth century. At the end of this century its decay began.

25

For Aristotle the principle of individuation was matter and form (vid. note, p. 33); for Averroes it was form; for St Thomas it was matter. For all “vitalists” the identity of form, soul and life is essential; thus Stahl regarded soul as bestowing on body all activity, as determining all vital functions. In Aristotle ψυχή is untranslatable = anima and animus – soul and vital principle. Πνεῦμα again in various writers may mean anything, from air to spirit or other essence; cf. Arist. De Generat. An. ii. 3, and the “aura” of Harvey, and even of Haller in the same connexion as the fertilising element.

26

Not for all, not for the greatest of them! Aristotle, in vain, warned later generations against prophesying what seems likely, instead of looking to see how things come about: – “οὐκ ἀληθῆ λέγοντες, ἀλλὰ μαντευόμενοι τὸ συμβησόμενον ἐκ τῶν εἰκότων, καὶ προσλαμβάνοντες ὡς οὕτως ἔχον πρὶν γινόμενον οὕτως ἰδεῖν.” (De Gen. Anim. IV. i.) “Croire tout ce qu’on rêve,” if useful and possibly admirable in its day, in “neo-Hegelians” is a little stale.

27

Thus, in ascending from general to more general, in the most general will be sought unique and perfect being; the primary cause and sole object of science – the αὐτοζῷον of the Alexandrians: whereas by successive eliminations utter abstractions would become utter vacuity. To such realists all subordinate beings are integral parts of the primary being. It would serve no useful end here to analyse these doctrines, or to indicate the pythagorean or stoical elements of them; for platonists and realists had their schools and degrees of subtlety; and Plato himself was inconsistent. Some brought secondary agents – demiurges or angels – into more creative activity, others carried creative reason back to the ideal good, and so on.

28

Held by Gilbert, and attributed to Averroes; but older than Averroes. In turning to Francis Bacon’s hypothesis I read (Ed. E. and S. ii. 263. Hist. Densi et rari – chapter, “Dilatationes per spiritum innatum se expandentem,” a Paracelsian sort of chapter) “Pulsus cordis et arteriarum in animalibus fit per irrequietam dilatationem spirituum, et receptum ipsorum, per vices.” The muscular quality of the heart was known to Galen, forgotten, and rediscovered. Spiritus vitalis, for Bacon, was “aura composita ex flamma et aere” (cf. Æn. vi. 747). Glisson has been fortunate in two generous judges, in Haller and Virchow; it would ill become me to depreciate a distinguished Fellow of my own College, and as a clinical observer Glisson had considerable merits; but as a physiologist he was sunk in realism. He was happy in the invention of the technical term “irritability,” but for him this virtue was as metaphysical an essence as the vital spirit; his prime motor was not physical. As a philosopher I fear the independent reader of his works will find him fanciful and wearisome.

29

Herein Harvey’s sagacity brought him towards the truth. “Air,” he says in the De generatione, “is given neither for the cooling nor the nutrition of animals … it is as if heat were rather enkindled within the fœtus (at birth) than repressed by the influence of the air.” Boyle (who says that he worked under the influence of Harvey’s discoveries) carried this matter forward by most interesting and sagacious experiments with his air-pump. For the layman, I may add that (to speak generally) before Harvey’s time respiration was regarded not as a means of combustion but of refrigeration. How man became such a fiery dragon was the puzzle!

30

Perfection was attributed, not only by medieval philosophers but also by Plato and Aristotle, to the circle. Circular movement was therefore the most perfect, and therefore again must be that of the planets. This is a good illustration of the almost necessary tendency in the earlier excursions of thought to equate incoordinates, and to fill gaps in reasoning from alien sources.

31

Not only movement but also formative activity. The ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως is the efficient cause of Aristotle; for him final causes direct motion – the οὗ ἕνεκα. Thus dialectic was taken for dynamics. Even Kant confused cause and effect with reason and consequence in hypothetical propositions (Benn). Caverni (Storia del methodo sperimentale in Italia, 1891-5) says that Jordanus Nemorarius (of Borgentreich near Warburg, d. 1236) made the great advance of extending the static physics of the ancients to establish dynamics; and that he introduced the word “moment.” In a cursory survey of the two works of Nemorarius which we have in Cambridge I have not been able to verify this statement; the notion I have found but not the word itself.

32

Vid. p. 44, note 2.