The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
The prevailing interest of the barbarian world, at last beginning to
settle into its heritage of antiquity, was with Logic. Of Aristotle
there survived in Latin dress only the _Categories_ and the _De
interpretatione_, the merciful legacy of Boethius, the last of the
philosophers. Had a translation of Aristotle's _Historia animalium_ or
_De generatione animalium_ survived, had a Latin version of the
Hippocratic work _On generation_ or of the treatises of Theophrastus _On
plants_ reached the earlier Middle Ages, the whole mental history of
Europe might have been different and the rediscovery of nature might
have been antedated by centuries. But this was a change of heart for
which the world had long to wait; something much less was the earliest
biological gift of Greece. The gift, when it came, came in two forms,
one of which has not been adequately recognized, but both are equally
her legacy. These two forms are, firstly, the well-known work of the
early translators and, secondly, the tardily recognized work of certain
schools of minor art.
The earliest biological treatises to become accessible in the west were
rendered not from Greek but from Arabic.[44] The first of them was
perhaps the treatise περι μυων κινησεως {peri myôn kinêseôs}, _On
movement of muscles_ of Galen, a work which contains more than its title
suggests and indeed sets forth much of the Galenic physiological system.
It was rendered into Latin from the Arabic of Joannitius (Hunain ibn
Ishaq, 809-73), probably about the year 1200, by one Mark of Toledo. It
attracted little attention, but very soon after biological works of
Aristotle began to become accessible. The first was probably the
fragment _On plants_. The Greek original of this is lost, and besides
the Latin, only an Arabic version of a former Arabic translation of a
Syriac rendering of a Greek commentary is now known! Such a work
appeared from the hand of a translator known as Alfred the Englishman
about 1220 or a little later. Neither it nor another work from the same
translator, _On the motion of the heart_, which sought to establish the
primacy of that organ on Aristotelian grounds, can be said to contain
any of the spirit of the master.[45]
[44] The early European translations from the Arabic are tabulated
with unparalleled learning by M. Steinschneider, 'Die Europäischen
Uebersetzungen aus dem Arabischen bis Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts',
in the _Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften in
Wien_, cxlix and cli, Vienna, 1904 and 1905.
[45] C. H. Haskins, 'The reception of Arabic science in England,'
_English Historical Review_, London, 1915, p. 56.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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