The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western CivilizationCubberley, Ellwood Patterson
History
The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization
Cubberley, Ellwood Patterson
Education -- History
To illustrate the reasoning as to geometrical forms which preceded the
finding of Euclid we quote from Maurus, who says that the science of
geometry "found realization also at the building of the tabernacle and the
temple; and that the same measuring rod, circles, spheres, hemispheres,
quadrangles, and other figures were employed. The knowledge of all this
brings to him, who is occupied with it, no small gain for his spiritual
culture." (R. 74 e). After Gerbert's time some geometry proper and the
elements of land surveying were introduced. The real study of geometry in
Europe, however, dates from the twelfth century, when Euclid was
translated into Latin from the Arabic.
6. ASTRONOMY. In astronomy the chief purpose of the instruction was to
explain the seasons and the motions of the planets, to set forth the
wonders of the visible creation, and to enable the priests "to fix the
time of Easter and all other festivals and holy days, and to announce to
the congregation the proper celebration of them." (R. 74 g).
[Illustration: FIG. 46. AN ANGLO-SAXON MAP OF THE WORLD
(From a tenth-century map in the British Museum)
This is one of the better maps of the period. Note the mixture of Biblical
and classical geography (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Pillars of Hercules), and
the animal life (lion) introduced in the upper corner. The Mediterranean
Sea in the center, the Greek islands, the British isles, the Italian
peninsula, the Nile, and the northern African coast are easily recognized.
Western Europe, the best-known part of the world at that time, is very
poorly done.]
Even after Ptolemy's _Mechanism of the Heavens_ (p. 49) and Aristotle's
_On the Heavens_ had filtered across the Pyrenees from the Saracens, in
the eleventh century, the Ptolemaic theory of a flat earth located at the
center of the heavenly bodies and around which they all revolved, while a
very pleasing theological conception, was absolutely fatal to any
instruction in astronomy worth while and to any astronomical advance. All
mediaeval astronomy, too, was saturated with astrology, as the selection
on the motion of the heavenly bodies reproduced from Bartholomew Anglicus
shows (R. 77 b), and the supernatural was invoked to explain such
phenomena as meteors, comets, and eclipses. The Copernican theory of the
motion of the heavenly bodies was not published until 1543, and all our
modern ideas date from that time.
Physics was often taught as a part of the instruction in astronomy, and
consisted of lessons on the properties of matter (R. 77 a) and some of the
simple principles of dynamics. Little else of what we to-day know as
physics was then known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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