Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The first wavelet justified Eudemus's generalization that "the
invention of the sciences originated in practical needs," and that
knowledge for its own sake was not the determining factor. The year
had been determined, stone circles erected almost everywhere, and
fires signaled from them, giving notice of the longest and shortest
days, so that agriculture was provided for, even away from churches
and the festivals of the Church. The original user of geometry was not
required away from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, and
therefore it is now medicine and surgery that come to the front for
the alleviation of human ills. In the eleventh century we find
Salerno, soon to be famed throughout Europe as the great medical
school, forming itself into the first university. And medicine did not
exhaust all the science taught, for Adelard listened there to a
lecture on "the nature of things," the cause of magnetic attraction
being one of the "things" in question.
This teaching at Salerno preceded by many years the study of the law
at Bologna and of theology at Paris.
The full flood came from the disturbance of the Arab wave center by
the crusades, about the beginning of the twelfth century. After the
Pope had declared the "Holy War," William of Malmesbury tells us "the
most distant islands and savage countries were inspired with this
ardent passion. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scotchman his
fellowship with vermin, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian his
raw fish." Report has it that in 1096 no less than six millions were
in motion along many roads to Palestine. This, no doubt, is an
exaggeration, but it reflects the excitement of the time, and prepares
us for what happened when the crusaders returned. As Green puts
it:[37] "The western nations, including our own, 'were quickened with
a new life and throbbing with a new energy.' ... A new fervor of study
sprang up in the West from its contact with the more cultured East.
Travelers like Adelard, of Bath, brought back the first rudiments of
physical and mathematical science from the schools of Cordova or
Bagdad.... The long mental inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like
ice before a summer's sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or
Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The
same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older
traditions of mankind, either local or intellectual, that drove half
Christendom to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands
of young scholars hurrying to the chosen seats where teachers were
gathered together."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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