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
[36] The judicious reader will remember in the Letters to Martinus
Scriblerus the “familiar instance” of the jack. “In every roasting
jack there is a meatroasting quality which neither resides in the fly,
nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack ... but is
inherent in the jack.... As sensation, reasoning, volition &c. are the
several modes of thinking, so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton,
roasting of pullets, geese, turkeys &c. are the several modes of
meatroasting.... And as the general quality of meatroasting, with its
several modifications as to beef, mutton, pullets &c. does not inhere
in any part of the jack, so neither does consciousness” &c. &c.
[37] Or indeed he shrank from them, as the continual exclusion of
divine interference seemed to him a starvation of moral growth. Vid.
Phædo, 96, the interesting passage beginning “ἐγὼ γὰρ νέος ὢν
Θαυμαστῶς ὡς ἐπεθύμησα ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως
ἱστορίαν κ.τ.λ.”
[38] The encyclopedic method, followed by Francis Bacon, and
perpetuated even in the nineteenth century by some German
metaphysicians, was not the mere collection of matter from any or all
quarters, after the manner of Pliny; nor again mere omniscience; but
was the demonstration of a cosmical theory from all departments of
knowledge. When knowledge was a theological philosophy theologians
were bound to supply thinking men with “Summæ,” or comprehensive
applications and casuistries of it. Hugo of St Victor (d. 1141) and
Robert Pullen (d. 1150) were the first scholastic Summists.
[39] Aristotle made many experiments, but experiments are not
necessarily verification; and for the most part his were not. It is
not experiment which makes science but the experimental method. Dr
Payne, in the Harveian Oration of 1896, reminded us that among the
ancients the forerunner of Harvey in this method was Galen.
[40] Those who are curious in manners will observe that during the
last few years the medievalising clergy in England have discarded that
fair linen which in the elder clergy was the emblem and the example of
cleanliness.
[41] “Nemo psychologus nisi prius physiologus,” said Johannes Müller.
[42] For example, one man, fixing his eyes on a sublime ideal of
holiness, confesses on his knees that he is a miserable sinner;
another, surveying men about him, repudiates this imputation: it is a
matter of parallax.
[43] Boyle, Essays, 2nd Ed. 1669, p. 119. In his Edition of 1661 Boyle
speaks of the discovery of Harvey “our English Democritus” (published
1628) as commonly accepted. Whereby, he says, other “very plausible
and radicated opinions” (the old schemes of the circulation) ... “are
generally grown out of request.”
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