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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
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.
The substance of a paper read at the Newman Association Congress, held at Ampleforth Abbey, August, 1944.
2 Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England. Cockayne. Rolls Series, 1865. Vol. II, pp. 125, 335, 341.
3 Gesta Regum Anglorum, Lib. ii, §225 ad fin. (Rolls Series, Vol. I, p. 276: P.L. 179, 1206.)
4 De Naturis Rerum. Ed. Thomas Wright. (Rolls Series, 1863, p. 160.)
5 Quaestiones naturales Perdifficiles Adelardi Bachonienses (sic). Joh. de Paderborna. Louvain, 1480(?). Quaestiones naturales, ed. M. Müller, Münster in W. (B.G.P.M. xxxi, L.ii). Dodi ve-nechdi (uncle and nephew) . . . ed. with an Engl. tr. to which is added the first Engl. tr. from the Latin of Adelard, of Bath's Questiones naturales by H. Gollancz; Oxford, 1920.
6 The Art of Falconry, the De arte Venandi cum avibus, tr. and ed., by C. A. Wood and F. M. Fyfe. Stamford Univ., 1943.
7 Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt e la sua epistola ‘De Magnete.’ P. D. Timoteo Bertelli, Barnabita. Rome, 1868. (Contains Latin Version).
Epistle of Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt to Sygerus of Foncaucourt. Silvanus. P. Thompson. London, 1902. (English Translation).
Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt and his Epistola de Magnete. Silvanus. P. Thompson. Proc. Brit. Acad. 1905-6, p. 377. (Contains bibliography).
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.
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