introduction to the history of science. volume iii, science and learning in the fourteenth centuryby...

Introduction to the History of Science. Volume III, Science and Learning in the FourteenthCentury by George SartonReview by: Richard McKeonIsis, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb., 1949), pp. 49-56Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227422 .

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Reviews

GEORGE SARTON: Introduction to the His- tory of Science. Volume III, Science and Learning in the Fourteenth Century. Part I, The Time of Abii-l-Fida, Levi ben Gerson, and WilIiam of Occam; Part II, The time of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ibn Kalduln, and Hasdai Crescas, xxxv + Xi + 2155 pp. Baltimore: Published for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, (Publication no. 376) by the Williams & Wilkins Company, 1947-48.

Twenty-two years ago the first volume of George Sarton's Introduction to the History of Science was published. The preparation and publication of the five massive tomes (making three "volumes") which carry his survey of the development of systematized positive knowledge in all parts of the world from the beginnings of history to the end of the fourteenth century has occupied him for almost the whole period since the First World War. It is a period which has seen a great increase in studies and publi- cations in the history of ideas together with a corresponding growth in recognition of the importance of the influence of ideas. In a sense, the history of ideas and speculations concerning the effects and the causes of ideas are as old as the oppositions of schools. It would be im- possible otherwise to recover and reconstruct today the early stages of the development of science; but the new materials which the historical treatment of ideas has made available have altered and enlarged our conception of history and of the place of ideas in history, and the development of science has itself radically changed the modern treatment of the history of science. The interrelations of cultures, which were during some epochs surprisingly broad and easy, and during other epochs narrow and restricted, must now be examined in universal terms of global scope; and the interrelations of subject matters must be viewed in terms of the unity and universaIity which modern science may be seen to be approximating. The historian of science has therefore been engaged in two interdependent tasks, a task of discovery and a task of theoretic construction; for his investigation of the development of branches of knowIedge, their applications and interrelations, and their effects on the intercourse of men, has necessitated the examination and use of new historical materials, while the investigation of those historical data has in turn affected the conception of science and its operation. Dr Sarton's achievement consists both in assem- bling a vast amount of material and in presenting a conception of the interrelations of men and of branches of knowledge. He has made catho- lic use of the materials accumulated by other

historians and he has criticized their leading principles shrewdly and sharply. His work can therefore be characterized in broad outlines by placing it in relation to the contributions of two other historians who contributed to the formation and rapid advance of the history of science during the last thirty years.

Charles Homer Haskins (who reviewed the first volume of Dr Sarton's Introduction in Isis, vol. X [19271, pp. 88-92) concentrated his researches in intellectual history about West- ern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In his Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science (1924), Haskins made available from his investigation of manuscript sources new information concerning the influence of Arabic science in the West, the translations from Arabic and Greek, and the translations of Aristotle's logic. In his Studies in Mediaeval Culture (1929), he made use of manuscript sources for information concerning literature, science and rhetoric, university life, heresies, and the spread of ideas. The masterly syntheses of his The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (I927) would have been far less plaus- ible without the evidence which he brought from his study of unpublished documents. Has- kins sought the continuities of thought in two dimensions, first, in the temporal in-fluences which he was able to trace connecting twelfth- century doctrinal movements with their Greek and Arabic sources and, second, in the interrelations that become apparent in his presentation of contemporaneous revivals in the study of the Latin classics, in jurisprudence, in science and philosophy. This view of knowledge and these new materials led him to conclusions in contradiction with those of Dr Sarton, as the latter was himself to point out in his review of Haskins which appeared in the same number of Isis as Haskins' review of the first volume of the Introduction. In Haskins' view of the development of knowledge, the use of reason was not seriously fettered by authority during the Middle Ages as Dr Sarton thought it was; and according to Haskins, scholasticism was a method which did not necessarily impose a uniformity of doctrine, whereas Sarton de- fined scholasticism as a subordination of science to theology, and he was so convinced that it is necessarily an impediment to the development of science that he turns from history to devote nine pages of his Introduction to discussing "Scholasticism, Its Cause and Its Cure."

Lynn Thorndike (who reviewed the first volume of Dr Sarton's Introduction in the American Historical Review, XXXIII [1928], 363-66) has covered the history of thought in Western Europe from the first century of the

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50 Reviews

Christian era to the sixteenth century in the six volumes of his monumental History of Magic and Experimental Science. When he began the task in 1923, he pointed out that evidence and source material are more abundant for the history of thought than for political or economic history, and that the history of thought is more unified and consistent, steadier and more regular, than the fluctuations and diversi- ties of political history. According to Thorn- dike, even the beginnings of civilization are to be found in magical practices, and his inquiries have shown the intricate relations of experimental science and magic at many stages of their development. Thorndike's studies, like those of Haskins, have taken him back to the manuscript sources, and he has greatly en- riched our knowledge by his report of the con- tents of works previously unknown or known only by title, by his publication of previously unpublished manuscripts, and by his systematization of incipits and other instruments of study in the history of science. In his review of volume I of the Introduction (p. 365) Thorn- dike protested "against the way in which Dr Sarton has failed to notice the association of science with magic and superstition." Dr Sarton once more reiterates, in the third volume, his disagreement with Thorndike's conception of the relation of science and magic (Introduction III, p. 28) as well as, in more general terms, his continued conviction that theological writings, even those of the Middle Ages, are im- probable sources in which to seek scientific doctrines and that science is sharply distinguished, even in scientists who are superstitious, from magic and superstition.

The unity which Dr Sarton seeks in the history of science is different from the unifying and universalizing themes of Haskins and Thorn- dike. Science may be conceived as a human activity and its development may be related to other human activities, political, social, economic, religious, artistic, moral, philosophic: Haskins studied such developments and sought the interconnections among such human activities. Science may also be conceived as an inquiry, a method, a pursuit directed to the acquisition of truth and the solution of problems of practical control, and its development may then be related to other pursuits of like objectives and other uses of like methods: Thorndike examines the successful lines along which experimental science has developed in the context of the false leads and alternative ideas among which positive knowledge origin- ated. Dr Sarton conceives science as systematized positive knowledge, and the development of science, that is, the acquisition and systematization of knowledge, is, unlike every other human activity, truly cumulative and progres- sive. What is of primary importance in Has- kins' or Thorndike's account is often of sec- ondary importance to him. He supplies a

minimum outline of the general history of the periods treated, and he reminds the reader from time to time of political, social, economic, religious, artistic and speculative occurrences; but his proper concern is with positive knowledge and therefore he treats even these fields more fully by adding to the treatment of the natural sciences a consideration of developments in law, sociology, historiography, philology, religion and philosophy. In like fashion, he treats of theories and applications of alchemy, astrology, numerol- ogy, geomancy, physiognomy, chiromancy, and magic; but a sharp line is always drawn between science and superstition and between positive knowledge and theology. Mysticism has a positive function in correcting and re- straining rational thinking; but scholasticism is conceived as an effort to reconcile lay knowledge with theology, committed therefore to premature generalization, to excessive deduction from arbitrary beliefs and from a small and limited body of experimental data, and to excessive reverence for canonical writings and authorities; and magic is essentially unprogres- sive and conservative. Dr Sarton chooses as the unifying principles of his work (Introduc- tion I, pp. 29 ff.) "three aspects of the fundamental unity of life": the unity of science, the unity of nature which is the main postulate of science indirectly confirmed by the whole development of knowledge, and the unity of man- kind demonstrated in the simultaneous discoveries made by scientists of different nations.

These three conceptions of science and its development entail fundamental philosophic dif- ferences, and they also turn the historian to different bodies of material in his search for new and relevant data. Haskins and Thorn- dike sought their new data in manuscripts which earlier historians of thought guided by different leading principles had not considered worthy of study. Dr Sarton's broad and in- clusive scheme turned him, not to original sources although he frequently regrets the lack of material and the absence of analyses of historical materials in particular fields, but to the co-ordination and interrelation of the work of scholars in many fields. He presented his project as a vast map or architectural plan, to be accomplished in three series of books: the first, a purely chronological survey in the form of cross-sections of civilization for each half- century of history, in eight or nine volumes; the second, surveys of different types of civilization, e.g., Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, in seven or eight volumes; the third, a survey of the evolu- tion of special sciences, in eight or nine volumes. Even in 1927 Dr Sarton did not plan to complete this task himself: he judged that he would be fortunate to finish the first series down through the eighteenth century in five or six volumes as well as two volumes of the second series and one volume of the third.

Dr Sarton reports on the progress of the



Reviews 5I

plan in the Introductory Chapter of volume III of the Introduction, which brings the first series down through the fourteenth century. He estimates that volume I, published in 1927,

required nine years of preparation; volume II, published in I931, thirteen years; volume III, published in 1947-48 (issued in 1948), twenty- seven. The lengthening time of preparation of each volume reflects the change in scope and detail: volume I covered two thousand years in 839 pages; volume II, in two parts, covered two hundred years in 1251 pages; volume III, in two parts, devotes one part to each half of the fourteenth century and covers a hundred years in 2155 pages. There are no natural limits to the materials that might usefully be assembled in a map of knowledge such as Dr Sarton planned, world-wide geographically and em- bracing all the branches of knowledge. Its value lies precisely in the vast variety of information it brings together and in the relations it reveals between events and ideas that are seldom considered together. Dr Sarton has assembled materials which future historians of science will find indispensable and has opened vistas which they will not be able to ignore however they orient their plans of study. His announcement (Introduction III, p. 5) that volume III is the last part of his scheme that he will carry out himself marks the completion of a vast and sustained systematic effort of scholarship. The gratitude of scholars will appear most appropriately in the use to which they increasingly put Dr Sarton's five large tomes, but one may add the hope of a long and fruitful career in preparation of the "various smaller volumes" to which he announces he will turn his attention.

The scheme of organization to set forth con- temporary developments in the different sciences and in the different parts of the world depends on a threefold classification according to times, geographic places, and branches of knowledge. Times are divided arbitrarily into half-centuries. The intellectual world is divided into Western Christendom, Eastern Christendom, Israel, Islam, Hindu India, China and Japan, and for some subjects there are further sub- divisions. Within each half-century, after a preliminary survey of science and intellectual progress during the half-century, the subject matter is treated in thirteen chapters: religious background, the translators, education, philosophic and cultural background, mathematics and astronomy, physics, technology and music, chemistry, geography, natural history, medicine, historiography, law and sociology, philology. All the chapters after the preliminary surveys treat the particular fields with which they are concerned by listing the men who contributed to advances in those subjects, setting forth their lives and achievements briefly, and listing their writings as well as works about them.

The fourteenth century is excellently suited to

such treatment. Dr Sarton is able to illustrate abundantly his thesis that "down to the end of the fourteenth century, Eastern and Western people were working together, trying to solve the same kind of problems" (Introduction HII, 21). The materials which he has brought together on the translators reveal not only the numerous means of intellectual communication that had been established among the peoples of the world, but also the shifts in direction, as, for example, the great increase of translations from the Latin in contrast to the flow of translations into Latin from Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In like fashion the chapters on geography include accounts of travellers who pene- trated to regions which became inaccessible during the fourteenth century or shortly after. Even when contacts were not established among the people of the fourteenth century, the mere juxtaposition of work done, problems investi- gated, ideas formulated and discoveries made, in different fields and in different parts of the world, adds a dimension to the account of the progress of thought in the fourteenth century and suggests frequent analogies to the problems with which man is still struggling in the twentieth century. More than ever before, a peaceful world community depends today on such understanding of what is occurring in the minds of men in various parts of the world as Dr Sarton supplies for the medieval prototype of that world, and his picture of the past assembles many ingredients important to the understanding of the present.

The great contribution of the Introduction consists in bringing together materials scattered through many fields, and the proper judgment of that achievement depends on recognizing the magnitude of the problems that it faced. Those problems are not unlike those which were faced by historians of other times who attempted in other fields to assemble for the first time the unclassified intellectual products of earlier times. The Hellenistic historians and the writers of treatises De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries used devices similar to Dr Sarton's in solving similar problems. Their first task was to choose important writers, determine dates, and enumerate works. They usually adopted the devices of brief biographies followed by lists of works. Diogenes Laertius and the writers of Tables from whom he borrowed had frequently to differentiate men of the same name who might be confused; Dr Sarton must pause frequently to attack the same problem, (cf., e.g., Introduction III, 676, where John of Saxony is identified with John Danko and distinguished from two other Johns of Saxony, and similar problems of identity on pp. 689, 69i, 698, 785, 840, 844, 852, and passim). They had to treat of works which were lost or unavailable or incorrectly attrib- uted. They had to resolve chronological con-



52 Reviews

fusions. In addition treatises De Scriptoribus Ecciesiasticis (which treat many of the same writers as the Introduction) are frequently arranged according to centuries, as, e.g., Bale, Oudin, Bellarmine, Cave: and at least one of them, Cave, uses Sarton's device of naming the century by the important person or move- ment of the time -thus, the fourteenth century is named for Wyclif the Saeculum Wicklevianum. Viewed in the light of these problems the achievement of the third volume of the Intro- duction is extraordinary. An omission, an in- correct name, date, or title are quickly noticed and criticized, whereas correctness in any of these respects is seldom the subject of remark. Even the captious critic will find remarkably few omissions; the bibliographies are not uni- formly up to date -some of them stop at I936 and are supplemented to I939 in the Addenda -and they are necessarily selective but well- chosen and accurate; the information is succinct and pertinent, though one may often quarrel with the distinctions and oppositions, and it is comprehensive even on tricky or controversial points. Dr Sarton has succeeded well in cov- ering the vast intellectual and geographic field, even the countries distant from western Europe and the subjects peripheral to natural science.

The system of continuous addition and correction which Dr Sarton has instituted in Isis makes provision for such factual alterations and for such items of bibliographical and biographical correction as would occur to a reader ap- proaching the Introduction from the orientation of a particular field or region. Some questions of fact and interpretation, however, group themselves about the method and basic principles by which the materials are organized. Future workers will be able to build most profitably on the foundations that Dr Sarton has laid in two ways: by completing lines of inquiry and filling in the lacuna revealed by the survey and by modifying the principles of classification to fit the accumulated materials more accurately and more significantly. The most important problems of classification have to do with the division and definition of the sciences, for if they were solved most of the awkwardness and distortion of the geographic and temporal divisions would be remedied or removed.

The temporal divisions into half-centuries are arbitrary. Dr Sarton frequently points out their arbitrary character and in treating important questions he sometimes goes back to review the development of doctrines across the centuries. But the half-century lines sometimes distort his interpretation and judgment. For example, Agostino Trionfo is called the "best spokesman" of the papalist party (In- troduction III, 314). This statement is accurate enough if the "papalist party" referred to is not that of the defenders of the papacy but the party that supported John XXII against Lud-

wig of Bavaria; but the doctrines in defense of papal power expounded in Agostino's Summa de Potestate Ecclesiastica are for the most part the same as those of Giles of Rome's De Potes- tate Ecclesiastica and James of Viterbo's De Regimine Principum. Giles' work, the earliest of the three treatises, was finished sometime before 1285, Agostino's, the last of the three, sometime between 1324 and 1328, so that the three were written within a period of about forty years, and Agostino's treatise was the least important of the three. Yet Giles (1247-

I3I6) is a man of the thirteenth century (In- troduction II, 922-26), his pupil James of Viterbo (died I308) is barely mentioned in a footnote (Introduction III, 402) and Agostino (I243-I328) is assigned to the fourteenth century (Introduction III, 985-986). The reason is of course to be found in the dates of completion of the chief writings of Giles and Agos- tino. (Incidentally, the reader should be referred to C. H. McIlwain's The Growth of Political Thought in the West; it would assist him a great deal in the intricacies of the political disputes of the fourteenth century.) For similar reasons, Peter d'Ailly (1350-1420) "belongs to the following century" (Introduction III, iiog). Yet if his doctrines were treated more fully -they are introduced frequently -the development and significance of Ockhamist thought in the many fields that it influenced would appear different -as will be apparent in the consideration of logic below.

The geographical divisions are likewise often arbitrary. Thus, Dr Sarton is at pains to em- phasize the internationalism of ideas during the fourteenth century, but the internationalism is brought out by the unfortunate device of treating scholars in national groups so that, for example, the Italian and French Ockhamists are taken up before William of Ockham because the narrative proceeds from the Italian, Spanish, and French to the English writers; and scientists and scholars who shared the same ideas or worked at the same centers of learning are frequently separated to be treated with coun- trymen who were concerned with other problems or committed to other theories. These are difficulties, but some system of classification is essential to provide the graph-lines in the interrelations of materials in so vast a field and few variables would be as colorless as time and place in the arbitrariness which all distinctions involve.

The third variable in the classificatory scheme on which the Introduction is built -the classification of the sciences underlying the sequence of the chapters -introduces arbitrary distinctions which are more difficult to neutralize. The principles of that classification determine the answers given to such questions as what shall be treated under the head of science, what shall be presented as the issues discussed and the oppositions of movements, and finally what



Reviews 53 will constitute progress in the history of a science. Dr Sarton devotes the opening pages of the third volume of the Introduction to some of the practical and theoretic consequences of the simple assumptions that underlie his classification of the sciences. His Preface begins with a section on "Truth and Peace" in which his thought moves from the fourteenth to the twentieth century and in which he argues that "science is the basis of unity and peace" (In- troduction III, vi). Yet when he comes to con- sider the practical value of historical research (p. 25) he points out no less plausibly that science alone is not enough. Neither the practical problems which the history of science suggests to Dr Sarton's mind nor the theoretic implications to which reflection on those problems leads can be treated adequately or significantly by use of the simple opposition of. positive knowledge and mysticism which he invokes (Introduction III, I7-I8). This is not the place to argue concerning the issues that are involved in the practical attempt to achieve world community and peace through understanding or concerning the methodological or metaphysical grounds of scientific knowledge. But it is relevant to ask how the history of science is affected by these distinctions and to point out that the compulsions which led Dr Sarton to include not only the natural sciences in his survey but also the religious background, education, the philosophic and cultural background, historiography, law and sociology and philology, force upon him the elements of a sounder conception of the development of science than the contrarieties of his simple theoretic distinction.

The historical equivalent of Dr Sarton's practical and theoretic paradoxes appears in his recognition, on the one hand, that the Middle Ages were pregnant with many ideas which were to be delivered much later and, on the other hand, that the defenders of positive knowledge were weak and few during the Middle Ages (Introduction HII, I4-I8). From this he concludes that the history of science requires the addition of "mysticism" to the opposed forces of "science" and "superstition," for while superstition must be avoided, mysticism must supplement science, and love and wisdom must perfect positive knowledge. On purely historical grounds, the pregnancy of the age and the paucity of virile minds might have suggested that the conception of "systematized positive knowledge" is inadequate to differentiate the streams of ideas and systems that constitute the history of science unless it is supplemented by methodological distinctions de- signed to uncover the sources of systematized positive knowledge in the questions which were eventually resolved by experimental investiga- tions and in the oppositions of systems and theories which were to suggest further questions in the course of the systematization of answers.

Dr Sarton recognizes that his presentation of many of the issues of the fourtenth century- such as the disputes of the papalists, conciliar- ists and imperialists, or the oppositions of the Guelphs and Ghibbelines - is oversimplified. He seems to have fewer qualms about the interpretation he gives to "nominalists" and "real- ists," and whereas an historian of science could not be expected to thread the intricacies of the dispute concerning the nature of knowledge and the methods of inquiry and proof, he might have guarded against the simple identification of nominalism with rationalism and the development of science (Introduction III, 82-83, I085) or the identification of realism or Scotism with conservatism (p. I089). Even in the fourteenth century, the pregnant scientific ideas were not all planted by nominalists, and writers like Whitehead have made a good case for associating the development of modern science with Platonism and realism. Similarly, Dr Sar- ton has not separated the innovations of medieval Scotists in logic and scientific theory from the nominalistic conceptions they opposed, and as radical a modern mind as C. S. Peirce went to Scotism for inspiration in the construction of novel departures in the logic and metaphysics of science.

The consequences of this simple conception of science are apparent in the treatment of the various parts of science. Dr Sarton acknowl- edges a fascination with the problem of the classification of the sciences, and he supplies a bibliography of modern books devoted to the subject (Introduction III, 77). But he pays little attention to medieval theories concerning the nature and classification of the sciences. The classification which he employs is at some points adjusted to medieval views of science, while at other points it is at variance with them. Thus, medicine and law, to which two chapters of the Introduction are devoted, would fit easily into medieval discussions of the arts and sciences; in those chapters Sarton treats books which were expressly devoted to medicine and law, and the chapters are organized simply according to geographic distribution. Physics, on the other hand, is conceived differ- ently than a fourteenth-century writer would have treated it: much that was important in medieval physics is omitted, the two chapters devoted to the developments in physics during the two half-centuries are arranged topically, and the rich speculation concerning physical theory is reduced to two extremely brief sections on mechanical theories (Introduction III, 736-40 and I564-67, to which should be added the general treatment of mechanical theories and the vacuum, in the two introductory chapters, that is, pp. 145-50 and 1126-27). Finally, logic would have figured in all medieval classifications of science, yet in Dr Sarton's scheme it is treated in passing, though with enthusiasm for what are interpreted as nominalistic de-



54 Reviews

velopments, as part of the philosophic background or as part of philology.

The investigation of the history of physics during the fourteenth century presents peculiar problems. If it is true that the century was pregnant with ideas that would determine later scientific development, the birth-pangs were particularly noticeable in the field of what was called physics or natural science or natural philosophy. But physical problems are discussed in places that would seem unlikely in some latter-day classifications of science: in commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in commentaries on Aristotle, not only his writings on natural science but his Organon and his Metaphysics, and finally in treatises on logic. Moreover, this preliminary posing of questions which were later to be put to experimental test, occurred in the intellectual framework of speculations concerning natural science and its principles, and later developments of science took account of that framework and often modified it consciously as an essential part of the increase in positive knowledge.

To account for the development of physics, or indeed of mechanics or astronomy, requires both the search for beginnings of physical knowledge in books that are not about physical science and the consideration of theories current about physical science. Dr Sarton engages in neither inquiry. He is reluctant to give attention to the first because such discussions are speculative rather than positive, and his quarrel with Duhem, who is our chief source of knowledge concerning these preliminary discussions, is based on a suspicion of bias since the earlier formulations reported from theological, philo- sophical and logical discussions are not strictly the same as the forms later verified and accepted (Introduction III, I46-47). The reason for his reluctance to treat the second is probably the conviction that the basic theories of medieval physics are no part of systematized positive knowledge, not even questionable progenitors of its line. How far he is from the fourteenthcentury point of view is illustrated by his re- flections on the term "natural philosophy." On page I1I65, Dr Sarton remarks the use of "philosophie naturelle" in the title of a work of Jean d'Outremeuse in the second half of the fourteenth century as "the earliest use of the phrase . . . known to me," adding that the generalization applies not only to French but to Latin and English forms and arguing in the footnote that the alternate title Philosophia naturalis of the Philosophia sive physica pau- perum ascribed to Albert the Great is a late addition. On page 550, he sets down Philosophia naturalis as the alternate title of Ockham's Summulae physicorum. On page i5o5, he com- pares Henry of Langenstein's conception of an astrologer with "our modern conception of the 'natural philosopher.'" On pages I843 and I859, in the Addenda, he brings Ockham and Jean

d'Outremeuse together and adds that Isidore of Seville used the term philosophia naturalis (sive physica) to designate the quadrivium, which is, "of course, a meaning different from Occam's and from ours." The history of the use of philosophia naturalis is not so brief or obscure, nor is its meaning so mysterious as these struggles would seem to indicate. It is true that Isidore of Seville divides natural philosophy into the sciences of the quadrivium, but he also describes its function as investi- gating "caeli causas atque vim rerum naturalium contemplata ratione" (Etymologies II, 24). Moreover, Cassiodorus had used the expression, philosophia naturalis, a hundred years earlier (Institutes II, 4-6, ed. Mynors, pp. iio-ii), and in his scheme it is not identified with the quadrivium. Philosophia is divided into inspectiva and actualis, and inspectiva in turn into naturalis, doctrinalis (the quadrivium) and divina. These two schemes (in both of which the expression philosophia naturalis appears) are respectively the "Platonic" divisions of the sciences into physics, ethics and logic, used in various forms by the Stoics, Academics and the Epicureans, and the Aristotelian division of the sciences into theoretic and practical, with the further subdivision of theoretic into physics, mathematics and theology. The sources of Isidore and Cassiodorus are therefore easy to find. Indeed, the passage in Isidore contains an unmarked quotation from Augustine, and the Platonic division (together with the expression philosophia naturalis) is found in the De Civitate Dei VIII, c. 4. The Aristotelian division, with natural philosophy and mathematics separate parts of speculative philosophy, is found in Boethius (De Trinitate II; Commen- tary on Porphyry's Isagoge, first edition, 3; second edition I, 3). It is not difficult to find instances during the early Middle Ages of the use of a term so conspicuously employed by Augustine, Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidore, and it is used in both meanings with such synonyms as physica, physiologia, mechanica, and scientia naturalis. The influence of the Arabic schemes of classification of the sciences and the translations of Aristotle's Physics and Meta- physics tended to settle the term in the late twelfth century and give it fuller content. There are innumerable occurrences of the term during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Thus, while Gundissalinus prefers, in his De divisione philosophiae, to use the terms scientia naturalis and scientia physica in referring to that division of theoretic philosophy, Robert Kilwardby, who was influenced by Gundissalinus, uses, in his De ortu et divisione philosophiae, the three terms philosophia naturalis, physica and scientia naturalis as synonyms. That set of synonyms became part of the general usage of the thirteenth century. Thomas Aquinas, for example, distinguishing the subject matter of physics from that of metaphysics and mathe-



Reviews 55 matics, writes (Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, Liber I, lectio i):

. . .de his vero quae dependent a materia non solum secundum esse sed etiam secundum rationem, est Naturalis, quae Physica dicitur. Et quia omne quod habet materiam mobile est, consequens est quod ens mobile sit subiectum naturalis philosophiae. Naturalis enim philosophia de naturalibus est; naturalia autem sunt quorum principium est natura; natura autem est principium motus et quictis in eo in quo est; de his igitur quae habent in se principium motus, est scientia naturalis.

At other times Aquinas, like other philosophers of the century, uses the fourfold scheme based on the Platontic division and differentiates four "sciences" according to four kinds of order: natural philosophy is concerned with the order of things which human reason considers but does not make, rational philosophy with the order that reason makes in its own activity, moral philosophy with the order that reason makes in voluntary actions, and the mechanical arts with the order that reason makes in exterior things (Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Liber I, lectio i).

The simplifications and confusions which distort the account of logical developments in the fourteenth century are more serious since they are errors of statements as well as omission. To begin with, Dr Sarton is mistaken when he equates logica vetus with logica antiqua and logica nova with logica moderna (Introduction III, 82 and 552). The logica vetus was based on the first two books of Aristotle's Organon as well as the commentaries and sometimes the logical tracts of Boethius; the logica nova was constituted during the twelfth century by the addition of the four remaining books of Aris- totle's Organon and Gilbert de la Porree's Liber de sex principiis to the sum of logical knowledge. During the thirteenth century the logica vetus and the logica nova, taken together, were called the logica antiqua to distinguish them from the characteristic approach to logical problems of the logica moderna instituted by William of Shyres- wood, Lambert of Auxerre and Peter of Spain. Commentaries on the logica vetus, therefore, continued to be written in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, even by logicians who had been influenced by the logica moderna.

In the second place, Dr Sarton is mistaken in supposing that there is a similarity of doctrine or analysis between the speculative grammarians or "modistae," on the one hand, and the Ockham- ists, on the other (Introduction III, 33I, 552, I003-I004). Moreover, it is not true that the "9main sources" of the "modistae" were the Peri Hermenias of Aristotle and commentaries on it (Introduction III, 33I). The speculative gram- mars or De modis significandi were attempts to set forth the rules of Priscian and Donatus as deductions from a philosophic theory. They could not have derived anything of their subject matter from the Peri Hermenias, for they

distinguish sharply between the parts of speech and constructions of grammar and the terms and propositions of logic, and the theory on which they are based concerning the relation of words, ideas, and things is in radical contradiction with the theory which the Ockhamists derived from the Pen Hermenias. Indeed, Siger of Courtrai derives the theory of meaning of the speculative grammarians, which he shares with Thomas of York, from Priscian, and the author whom he quotes by far the most frequently is Priscian. The theory of meaning of the modes of signifying consists in distinguishing three "modes": the mode of being, the mode of understanding, and the mode of signifying. There is an active and a passive mode of understanding: the intellect by the active mode of understanding understands the mode of being or the property of the thing, while the passive mode of understanding is the mode of being of the thing as apprehended by the intellect. Likewise there is an active and a passive mode of signifying: the active mode of signifying is the meaning given to a word by which it signifies a thing, while the passive mode of signfying is the thing itself signified by the word through the meaning attached to it. Con- sequently, as the "modistae" put it, the mode of being, the passive mode of understanding, and the passive mode of signifying are materially and really the same, although they differ form- ally, and that formal difference explains the distinction of idea, word and thing when the thing is understood by the idea and the word signifies the thing. This is, thus, a "realistic" theory of meaning. At the opening of the Pen Hermenias Aristotle says that spoken words are symbols of passions of the mind and written words are symbols of spoken words, adding that men do not share the same written or spoken words, but the passions of the mind which they symbolize are the same for all as are the things of which our experiences are the images. The "modistae" usually quote the statement that words are symbols of passions of the mind, but the dependence of their theory on the Peri Hermenias goes little further than that. On the other hand, the Ock- hamists, who were the chief opponents of the speculative grammarians, built a contrary nominalistic theory of meaning on this passage in the Peri Hermenias. Thus Peter d'Ailly, in the Destructiones modorum signijicandi (probably written in the second half of the fourteenth century), first enumerates nineteen reasons that might be advanced in support of the modes of signifying, then, in good Ockhamist fashion, at- tacks the grounds of the distinction between active and passive modes of understanding and of signifying, and, finally, proposes as an alternative theory of meaning the division of signs into mental, vocal, and written, and the division of the meaning of signs into natural and ad placitum. This is the theory of meaning expounded in Ockham's Summa totius logicae. Sar- ton's list of the "modistae" of the fourteenth cen-



56 Reviews

tury also is far from complete: Siger of Coutrai, William of Ockham (!), Thomas of Erfurt (In- troduction III, 332), and Michael of Marbais (p. I004). Martin Grabmann, in his "Die Ent- wicklung der Mittelalterlichen Sprachlogik," Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, Munich, 1926, pp. I04-146 (which should be added to the bibliography) reports concerning the work of fourteen authors, including three of Sarton's four, most of whom lived in the fourteenth century. In- cidentally, the Summulae logicae of Buridan is not "a commentary on the logic of William of Occam" (Introduction III, 541); it is a literal reproduction and a reworking of Peter of Spain's Summulae, with occasional abbreviations and long and important additions, as well as long sections identical with Peter's work.

It requires more space to set forth the grounds of criticism than to express even enthusiastic ap- proval and praise. The modifications suggested in these remarks concerning the development of physics and logic during the fourteenth century can be made easily, and one of the virtues of the plan of the Introduction is that the classificatory scheme intrudes only to a minimum degree and frequently suggests its own limitations and means for their rectification. In a work of the scope encompassed by the third volume of the Introduction there are sure to be imperfections which scholars in particular fields will detect, and the enumeration of such corrections or points of difference does not detract from the massive achievement of the work. Dr Sarton has not only laid the groundwork on which students of intellectual history of the fourteenth century will continue to work for a long time, but he has also given scholars in all fields a significant example of the importance of broadening the boundaries of knowledge to include the related fields of inquiry and the interrelated regions of the world. University of Chicago RICHARD MCKEON

MAX H. FISCH: Nicolaus Pol Doctor z494. With a critical text of his Guaiac Tract edited with a translation by Dorothy M. Schullian. 346 pp., i8 pl. New York: Published for the Cleveland Medical Library Association by Herbert Reichner, 1947.

In Nicolaus Pol Doctor z494, Professor Max Fisch has presented us not only with a worthy and distinctive memento of the semi-centennial of the Cleveland Medical Library Association but with an able and important contribution to the history of the Renaissance which will be of exceptional interest to the medical historian and bibliographer.

Nicolaus Pol is a name which will be quite unfamiliar even to the student of the history of medicine unless he has happened to follow one of the less frequented bypaths in the pursuit of the early history and treatment of syphilis. Here, the name may be encountered appended

to a short tractate on the cure of the disease by guaiac which is addressed to Matthew Lang, Cardinal of Gurk and Bishop Coadjutor of Salz- burg, and usually found in one or other of the sixteenth-century collections on the treatment of the French disease. The work is dated at the end of the final chapter, I9 December I5I7, but the earliest printed version known is that published at Venice in I535, occurring both as a separate pamphlet and in the syphilis collection issued by Johannes Patavinus and Venturinus de Ruffinellis in the same year. Those who have met with the document have recognized that if the dating can be accepted at face value, then the tract is the earliest writing on the guaiac treatment, preceding by a year or two the anonymous pamphlet of Augsburg, the recipe of Leonard Schmaus and the influential testimo- nial of Ulrich von Hutten. But this is a meager claim to the recognition of posterity and the name, Nicolaus Pol, is seldom listed, even in the largest of the medical biographical lexicons. However, the history of the introduction of the remedy on which he wrote is almost as obscure a subject as that of Pol himself; hence some little interest has remained in the hope that by uncovering the history of guaiac something might be found to clarify that most contentious of subjects, the origin of syphilis.

In his study of Nicolaus Pol, Max Fisch draws aside the curtain of obscurity to reveal the figure of a brilliant and versatile Renais- sance physician and rehabilitates an outstand- ing humanist scholar, the collector of one of the most notable private libraries in Europe. It would seem that Nicolaus Pol (ob. I532) took the whole field of learning as his province. Brought up and educated at the court of the Duke Sigismund at Innsbruck, he served this nobleman as apothecary. On the Duke's abdica- tion in I490, he continued in the employ of his successor, the Emperor Maximilian I, in the higher capacity of physician and counsellor and, on the death of the latter in 15I9, he apparently passed into the service of Charles V, possibly as court chaplain. He achieved considerable distinction as a teacher, physician and scholar. The author tells us what is known of his associates and of his correspondence with fellow human- ists. Harvey Cushing assumed that Vesalius was one of his colleagues which, as Max Fisch points out, he could not have been since Pol died in I532; but "it is possible that Pol knew Vesalius' father, who was in Spain as pharma- cist to the later Emperor Charles V in 1517 when Pol was probably there on Cardinal Lang's mission." This is more than possibility since the Vesalius family was intimately related to the court of Maximilian. Everard, Vesalius' grandfather, was physician to Mary of Bur- gundy and on her marriage to Maximilian became a member of his staff, being rewarded for his services with the rank of chevalier. His bas- tard son Andreas, Vesalius' father, obtained the



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