A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our EraThorndike, Lynn
History
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Thorndike, Lynn
Magic -- History; Science -- History
But Rose was further mistaken in his assertion that Daniel’s _De
philosophia_ “has left no trace in subsequent literature; no one has
read it and no one cites it.” Not only is the work found complete
in three manuscripts of which Rose did not know, and of which one
appears to be twice removed from the original. In a manuscript of
the fourteenth century at Oriel College, Oxford,[520] in the fitting
company of excerpts from Adelard of Bath and Gundissalinus, are
over three double column folio pages of extracts drawn from various
portions of the _Philosophia_. These begin with Daniel’s excuse for
borrowing the eloquence and wisdom of the infidels and with some of his
utterances anent the creation of the world. They include a number of
his citations of other writers, his story of the two fountains outside
the walls of Toledo which varied in fulness with the moon’s phases and
contained salt water although remote six days journey from the sea,
and other bits of his astrological doctrine. A similar, although not
identical, selection of pearls from Daniel’s philosophy is found in one
of the notebooks of Brian Twyne,[521] the Elizabethan antiquary, who
gives the title of Daniel’s work as _De superioribus et inferioribus_
and makes extracts both from its first and second books. Both Twyne and
the Oriel manuscript’s writer seem to have been particularly impressed
with Daniel’s views concerning the creation, rather than his retailing
of astrological doctrine. Twyne first repeats his statement that the
quantity of the universe reveals the power of its Maker; its quality,
His wisdom; and its marvelous beauty, His unbounded good will. Twyne
also notes Daniel’s phrase, “court of the world,” for the universe.
Both Twyne and the Oriel manuscript note the passage concerning the
triple universe, and another in which Daniel tells how the three human
qualities, reason, irascibility, and desire, may be either used to
discern and resist evil, or perverted to evil courses. Both also notice
his contention that the chaos preceding creation was not _hyle_ or
matter but a certain contrariety present in matter.
[Sidenote: Roger of Hereford.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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