It is sometimes thought that the medieval scholars did not consider that
experience and observation were of any value in the search for truth, and
that therefore there could have been no development of science. In an
article on "Science at the Medieval Universities"[2] I made a series of
quotations from the two great scientific scholars of the thirteenth
century, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, with regard to the question of
the relative value of authority and observation in all that relates to
physical science. Stronger expressions in commendation of observation and
experiment as the only real sources of knowledge in such matters could
scarcely be found in any modern scientist. In Albert's tenth book of his
"Summa," in which he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and
herbs known in his time, he declares: "All that is here set down is the
result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we
know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed; for in
these matters experience alone can be of certainty." In his impressive
Latin phrase, _experimentum solum certificat in talibus_. With regard to
the study of nature in general he was quite emphatic. He was a theologian
as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on "The Heavens and the
Earth," he declared that: "In studying nature we have not to inquire how
God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work
miracles, and thereby show forth His power. We have rather to inquire
what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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