Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of ThoughtRedgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Philosophy
Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought
Redgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Alchemy; Magic; Superstition
In endeavouring to estimate the worth of PYTHAGORAS' discoveries and
teaching, Mr FRANKLAND writes, with reference to his achievements in
geometry: "Even after making a considerable allowance for his pupils'
share, the Master's geometrical work calls for much admiration"; and,
"... it cannot be far wrong to suppose that it was Pythagoras' wont
to insist upon proofs, and so to secure that rigour which gives to
mathematics its honourable position amongst the sciences." And of his
work in arithmetic, music, and astronomy, the same author writes: "...
everywhere he appears to have inaugurated genuinely scientific methods,
and to have laid the foundations of a high and liberal education";
adding, "For nearly a score of centuries, to the very close of the
Middle Ages, the four Pythagorean subjects of study--arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, music--were the staple educational course, and were
bound together into a fourfold way of knowledge--the Quadrivium."(1)
With these words of due praise, our present excursion may fittingly
close.
(1) _Op. cit_., pp. 35, 37, and 38.
III. MEDICINE AND MAGIC
THERE are few tasks at once so instructive and so fascinating as the
tracing of the development of the human mind as manifested in the
evolution of scientific and philosophical theories. And this is,
perhaps, especially true when, as in the case of medicine, this
evolution has followed paths so tortuous, intersected by so many
fantastic byways, that one is not infrequently doubtful as to the true
road. The history of medicine is at once the history of human wisdom and
the history of human credulity and folly, and the romantic element (to
use the expression in its popular acceptation) thus introduced, whilst
making the subject more entertaining, by no means detracts from its
importance considered psychologically.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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