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
Both for Al-Farabi and Gundissalinus the sciences of images and
judgments were undoubtedly astrological. Gundissalinus himself believes
that the spiritual virtue of the celestial bodies is the efficient
cause, ordained by the Creator, of generation, corruption, and other
natural operations in this corporeal world. He defines _astrologia_
as we would astronomy, while he explains that _astronomia_ is the
science of answering questions from the position of the planets and
signs. There are many such sciences,--geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy,
pyromancy, chiromancy, and augury; but astronomy is superior to
the rest because it predicts what will befall upon earth from the
dispositions of the heavenly bodies. Gundissalinus also repeats
Isidore’s distinction between _astronomia_ and _astrologia_, and
between the natural and superstitious varieties of “astronomy.”[214]
[Sidenote: Robert Kilwardby, _De ortu sive divisione scientiarum_.]
At this point it may be well to note briefly a later work with a
very similar title to that of Gundissalinus, namely, the _De ortu
sive divisione scientiarum_ of Robert Kilwardby,[215] archbishop
of Canterbury from 1272 to 1279. The work borrows a great deal from
Isidore, Hugh of St. Victor, and Gundissalinus. One of its more
original passages is that in which Kilwardby suggests an alteration
in Hugh’s division of the mechanical arts, omitting theatrical
performances as more suited to Gentiles than Catholics, and arranging
the mechanical arts in a _trivium_ consisting of earth-culture,
food-science, and medicine, and a _quadrivium_ made up of costuming,
armor-making, architecture, and business-courses (_mercatura_), after
the analogy of the seven liberal arts.[216] Kilwardby, as has been
already noted elsewhere, repeats Hugh’s classification of the magic
arts.[217]
[Sidenote: Plato of Tivoli.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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