Science and Medieval Thought: The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford)
Philosophy
Science and Medieval Thought: The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900
Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford)
Philosophy, Medieval
To those who live only in the past, or only in the present, there seems
in the discriminations of the comparative historian to be a certain
cold-bloodedness. Are not the ears of this critic, so aloof from the
murmuring of creed and controversy, are they not deaf to the voices of
the spirit which he would interpret to us? A distinguished bishop who
was among my hearers, with the fervour and gentle humour so well known
in him, rallied me not for celebrating science but for putting religion
to rout. Yet in our own day surely the argument is changed, not in form
only but in very nature; so changed by the conceptions of evolution,
which have entered the mind of churchman and layman alike, that not a
few speculative beliefs are changing sides without the knowledge of the
disputants; and he who thinks himself a defender of the faith may have
joined the revolt. But if we no longer carry the colours of the troops
of the past we shall collect our lessons from its strategies; and for
one of these lessons a prelate of the King will give thanks with me,
that his supremacy has palsied the arm of the inquisitor to strengthen
that of the apostle.
* * * * *
An unsystematic reader of a subject finds it out of his power to make
due acknowledgment of the help and advantage derived from expert
authors. Much of the matter had seeded itself insensibly in his brain in
the course of general reading and conversation; much of it again had
been obtained more carefully from sources now forgotten. To the
following authors I know I am profoundly indebted, as I am to many
others to whose names and works I can now give no reference:
Hauréau, La Philosophie Scolastique, Ed. 1872;
Jowett, Dialogues of Plato (vol. III. p. 523);
Jourdain (Amable), Recherches critiques, Paris 1848;
Jourdain (Charles), Excursions historiques, Paris 1888 (and the
Philosophie de St Thomas of the same author);
Ampère, Histoire litt. de la France avant le XIIme siècle;
Brucker's Historia Critica Philosophiæ (English Ed., 1791);
Renan, Averroès, Paris 1866; the Philosophie périp. apud Syros;
and the Peuples Sémitiques dans l'histoire de la civilisation, of
the same author;
Roger Bacon, Westminster Review, 1864, two Articles (by Thomas
Marshall, M.A. Oxon.);
Schmidt, Essai sur les Mystiques du XIVme siècle;
Benn, A. W., The Greek Philosophers, London 1882 (and many helpful
essays in periodical literature);
Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, 1881;
Krische, A. B., Theologische Lehre d. Griechischen Denker,
Göttingen 1840;
Ueberweg, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil. des Alterthums, Berlin
1867; Gerlach und Traumüller, Gesch. d. physik.
Experimentierkunst, Leipzig 1899;
Rashdall's History of Universities;
Haeser, Geschichte der Medicin, Jena 1875-82;
Baas, J. H., Gesch. d. Medicin, Stuttgart 1876;
_Idem_, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung des ärztlichen Standes,
Berlin 1896;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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