science and thought in the fifteenth centuryby lynn thorndike

Science and Thought in the Fifteenth Century by Lynn ThorndikeReview by: George SartonIsis, Vol. 14, No. 1 (May, 1930), pp. 235-240Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/224392 .

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REVIEWS 235

certain that his original name was MANASSEH (see my Introduction, vol. i,

531; correction in Isis, I3, I50). This volume is the fifth of the splendid collection entitled Early science

in Oxford, the finest monument ever built by a single man to the scientific glories of old England. For the earlier volumes (1920-25), see Isis, 13, i i8. GEORGE SARTON.

Lynn Thorndike. - Science and thought in the fifteenth century. Studies in the history of medicine and surgery, natural and mathematical science, philosophy and politics. XII + 387 p., io p1. New York, Columbia University Press, 1929 (4.75).

This book is what the French would call ((materiaux pour l'histoire du XVe siecle v. Materials for the study of the fifteenth century, - first hand and first class materials. Judging by the number of Mss. which the author has read or examined (for this and his earlier works) he must be able to do it with a relative ease, amounting to virtuosity. To be sure such ease grows as one's experience increases, and THORNDIKE'S

experience of libraries and their treasures is considerable, but as everybody knows experience is of little profit unless it be built up upon inborn ability. Without such ability, experience does never integrate itself; it remains disjointed, meaningless, and sterile.

To say with the author ((It is hardly possible as yet to draw a general picture of the fifteenth century thought and science)) is perhaps going a little too far, for we have already abundant and precise information on the fifteenth century mathematics. astronomy, chemistry, physics, anatomy, medicine, etc. In fact it would require not only ability and persistence but unusual luck to find a European text which would modify our knowledge of these subjects on any essential point. But there is undoubtedly much room for new and deeper investigations into the Mss. The truth is not that a satisfactory synthesis is as yet impossible, but that it has generally been attempted in the wrong way. Not only historians of the old type, but also historians of science have been constantly deluded by that beautiful word ((Renaissance )). Of course, few are still crude enough to think of the Middle Ages as a nondescript period, whose main interest is to be between two really worthwhile ones, a long period of dissolution followed by the glorious reawakening of the Renaissance, when mankind reassumed the ancient traditions, a long period of darkness, followed by the miraculous dawn of the quat- trocento. This oversimplified notion is now abandoned, yet even the more sophisticated are still under the spell of a beautiful name. The fact is that the Renaissance was not more a revival than any other period of the past, and that it was perhaps less so than the twelfth and thirteenth



236 ISIS, xiv, I

centuries. As JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS had already said half a century ago ((The Renaissance in general may be called the Middle Ages in dissolution)). This was far more true than SYMONDS could imagine, because his acquaintance with scientific and philosophic thought was but superficial. I have recently tried to show how very true it was. (i) When shall people finally get rid of the childish notion of comparing things which have no common measure? To say that this century is better than this other is pure foolishness. There are continual changes, which may be but are not necessarily nor always improvements; life is constantly flowing, unbuilding as well as upbuilding is going on, dissolution and reconstruction. Every age is a renaissance for some people, and the end of the world for others; every age is dull in some respects, and brilliant in others; every age is creative even when it destroys. But the one thing that we can say with confidence is that in spite of accidental cataclysms, knowledge is all the time accumulating, correcting and purifying itself. There may be periods of stagnation or even tem- porary backwardness, a nation may become inactive for a time, but thte main drift is proceeding in the same direction: steady accumulation and purification of knowledge. It is for that very reason that the history of science is so tremendously interesting and should be the very backbone of historical studies. For example, I just said that it is impossible to make a quantitative comparison between different periods and to give the prize to this or that one. The activities of the fifteenth century were so different from those of the thirteenth century that we cannot say this or that one is better. But we can say this with confidence: The general level of knowledge attained by the intellectual leaders of the fifteenth century was higher than that attained by their ancestors of the thirteenth century: this does not prove that the former were more intelligent; they were simply standing upon the shoulders of their elders.

To return to THORNDIKE'S book, as it is a collection of independent studies on a number of separate subjects, the best that I can do is to in- dicate its contents, adding a few remarks when necessary, or references to Isis. Indeed many of these studies had previously appeared in other journals, including Isis, but even in those cases, they are partly new because of the revisions and enlargements which they have undergone.

I. Introduction: The study of western science of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Isis, 8, 543). This is a sort of transition between the present work and the author's earlier one, his History of magic and experimental science during the first thirteen centuries of our era (2 vols.,

(i) In my essay on Science in the Renaissance in a collective work The Civilization of the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1929, 75-95).



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I923; see Isis, 6, 74-89). The History of magic told the story down to about I327. I hasten to add that the present work is not in any sense a continuation of the former. To begin with it does n ot attempt to tell a full story; it simply offers the materials which have been thus far worked out. On the other hand, it is immeasurably superior to the first work, by its better understanding of scientific problems. It is clear that the author has developed considerably in that respect during the last five years, and I trust, that if he had to rewrite today his History of magic, he would do it in a very different vein.

II. Medicine versus law at Florence (Isis, 9, I55). Apropos of a favorite subject of disputation in Florence, whether medicine is superior to law or not.

III. The manuscript text of the Cirurgia of LEONARD OF BERTIPAGLIA

(Isis, 8, 264-84, I926; 9, 506). IV. A Practica cirurgie ascribed to JOHN BRACCIA of Milan or to

PETER OF TossIGNANO. This takes us back to the fourteenth century. ((The work is concerned with the practice of surgery, and is discussed here for the further reason that it so well complements the impressions which we have just received in the previous chapter from the writings of LEONARD OF BERTIPAGLIA as to the Italian surgery of the closing middle ages.)) It is impossible to decide whether PETER OF TOSSIGNANO or JOHN BRACCIA of Milan was the author. At any rate that Practica was a valuable treatise containing genuine clinical notes some of which are quoted.

V. Some minor medical works written at Florence (Isis, 9, 29-43 I927).

VI. A fifteenth-century autopsy. First hand account of an autopsy by BERNARD TORNIUS (I452-97), professor of medicine in Padua. ((The bodies used in the university dissections were commonly those of executed criminals or other outcasts; the surgeons usually would treat only those cases where they thought that recovery was likely. In the present autopsy, on the other hand, we find a physician of note recommending, and a high official, presumably of good family, social standing, and considerable property, agreeing to a postmortem examination of the vital organs of the official's own son, with the aim to discover if the com- plaint of which he died was of hereditary character and so to prescribe more intelligently for the other children of the same father.))

VII. NICHOLAS OF CUSA and the triple motion of the earth. To bridge the gap which was supposed to exist between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, two methods may be used. One may show that the mediaeval scientists were not as ((mediaeval)) in the conventional sense (i.e., were not as hopelessly backward) as is generally thought; or one may show that the (( moderns )) were not quite as modern. THORN-



238 ISIS, XIV, I

DIKE uses both methods with equal skill. This essay is an application of the second. ((Of the triple motion of the earth which HELLER and GERLAND credited CUSA with devising, there was no clear mention in the De docta ignorantia. Indeed, it is not contained in any of his works, but is briefly suggested in a note which he made upon one of the blank leaves of an astronomical, or rather, astrological manuscript that he purchased at Niirnberg in September, I444. This brief note was printed in I847 by CLEMENS in a footnote to his book on GIORDANO BRUNO and NICHOLAS OF CUSA, where it occupies barely a page. It is this humble jotting which has been elevated by the unbalanced and fantastic judgment of subsequent writers into an astronomical system marking the cleavage between the Ptolemaic and Copernican views and the be- ginning of modern astronomy.))

VIII. PEURBACH and REGIOMONTANUS: their great reputation re-

examined. THORNDIKE claims that the importance of these two mathematicians has been exaggerated. I am not sure of that. I have been thinking of them, and of their contemporary mathematicians, off-and-on, for some twenty years, and my admiration for them is still increasing. However I prefer not discuss the question until I have reached that period in my Introduction, i.e., until I have all the facts of the fifteenth century mathematics neatly ordered in front of me. It is clear that it is only after such a comparative survey has been completed that the relative value of achievements can be appreciated.

IX. The arithmetic of JEHAN ADAM, A.D., I475 (Isis, 9, I55). X. NICCOL6 DA FOLIGNO'S treatises on ideas: a study of scholasticism

and Platonism in the fifteenth century. This NICCOL6 DA FOLIGNO (not to be confused with his younger namesake, the artist ALUNNO)

citizen of Arezzo, was born in I402 and died at Pisa in I474. He appa- rently wrote two treatises on ideas, the one addressed to his compater NICCOL6, from Todi, in I470, the other addressed later to LORENZO DE' MEDICI. The second is inferior to the former, but more in the humanist manner. The surprizing thing is that both treatises reveal a very poor knowledge of Platonism combined with much scholasticism. ((It is a revelation to see so stiff a dose of scholasticism administered to the patron of the Platonic Academy, however gilded the pill may be with humanistic mannerisms.)) ((LORENZO DE' MEDICI was to have his attention again called to ARISTOTLE and the Platonic ideas by LORENZO BUONINCONTRI di San Miniato, the astrologer and poet, in the commen- tary to his poem on ' Things divine and natural ')).

XI. Some Renaissance rnoralists and philosophers. Deals with four treatises of the second half of the fifteenth century; the De cultu humanitatis et honestatis by GREGORY CRISPUS of Toulouse; the De humane vitefelicitate



REVIEWS 239

dialogus by BARTHOLOMEW FAZIO (printed, I473; Antwerp, 1556); the De moribus of JOHN NEsIus; the De Deo et rerum naturalium principiis et summa beatitudine by OLIVER OF SIENA.

((To sum up the total effect produced by the treatises which have been considered in this chapter, it has to be said that they display almost no new ideas or advance over the thirteenth century, that they are largely tiresome and insipid reading, sometimes affected. No pagan revival in morals or philosophy is manifested in them; there is merely a slight classical coloring in nonessentials. Classical allusions and citations are multiplied, but the Christian and Aristotelian points of view are inter- mingled much as in the preceding medieval period. We meet the same virtues as were personified in medieval allegory, drama, and art; we encounter such familiar themes as spontaneous generation and the orders of fallen angels. We fail to detect in our treatises any of that ' awakening of the human spirit ' which has been so often and so vaguely ascribed to an Italian Renaissance.))

XII. The De constitutione mundi of JOHN MICHAEL ALBERT of Carrara and its relation to similar treatises (Isis, IO, 141).

XIII. LiPPus BRANDOLINUS De comnparatione reipublicae et regni: a treatise in comparative political science (Isis, IO, 142).

This rich fare is followed by a number of appendices containing extracts from the Mss. discussed, tables of contents, and other complementary documents.

To discuss details in a book which is somewhat in the nature of a chrestomathy, would carry us too far, but there are two remarks which I cannot refrain from making. First THORNDIKE'S reference (on p. 5) to syphilis implies that he considers SUDHOFF'S thesis proved. It is not; of course the opposite thesis (American origin) is not proved either, but it is impossible to prove completely the negative proposition that syphilis did not exist in Europe before COLUMBUS'S time. Spirochaetae pallidae may have originated in the old world, but if so, where are the clinical accounts of their doings before I495 ? Syphilis is characterized by very neat symptoms; how is it that no ancient or mediaeval physician ever gave us an unmistakable description of them? Second, the author's definition of PETER DUBOIS, JEAN DE JANDUN, and MARSIGLIO OF PADUA,

as royal jackals is an unfortunate lapse of urbanity. I can only account for it by supposing that the author was half asleep when he wrote that line, and that his pen was then guided by an evil spirit. These men were lawyers, but far better than the majority of them; in fact, they were very great men. Perhaps the author meant simply to stress the word royal? If he assumes all lawyers to be jackals, these were royal jackals indeed. However this interpretation would be even less pleasant



240 ISIS, XIV, I

than the former, and it is more charitable to postulate a simple lapsus calami. The author meant to write jurist and he wrote jackal; the two words look so much alike that a palaeographer might easily confuse them.

Ten beautiful plates will give the reader an idea of the kind of raw materials out of which these studies have been distilled. As the field of such investigations is immense, let us hope that many more volumes of the same kind will follow this one. GEORGE SARTON.

H arry Austryn Wolfson. - CRESCAS' Critique of ARISTOTLE. Problems of ARISTOTLE'S physics in Jewish and Arabic philosophy. xvi + 759 p. (Harvard Semitic series, vol. 6) Cambridge, Harvard Uni- versity Press, I929.

In form this is a critical edition of a part of CRESCAS' Or Adonai, together with an English translation and abundant notes. In reality, it is considerably more,-a historical and comparative study of some of the main problems of Aristotelian physics with special reference to the Arabic and Hebrew writings. If this book contained nothing more than a critical edition with translation and the usual notes, we would dispose of it with a few sentences, but it is in fact a deep investigation into Arabic and Jewish philosophy, which will help us better to understand mediaeval thought and mediaeval science.

But we must not anticipate, and as we have no right to assume that our audience is very familiar with CRESCAS, let us introduce him first. HASDAI BEN ABRAHAM CRESCAS was a Catalan Jew; born in Barcelona in 1340, after I391 he flourished in Saragossa and died there in I4IO. The Or Adonai (Light of the Lord), by far his most important work, was not completed until the end of his life. It is a large philosophical and theological treatise, divided into four books (ma'amarim), the first three of which are subdivided into parts (kelalim, summulae), which are again subdivided into chapters (peraqim) ((The first twenty-five chapters of Part I of Book I are written in the form of proofs of the twenty- five propositions in which MAIMONIDES summed up the main principles of ARISTOTLE'S philosophy. The first twenty chapters of Part II of Book I are written in the form of a criticism of twenty out of the twenty- five propositions. The present work deals with these two sets of chapters, with the proofs and the criticisms. Together they compose about one sixth of the entire work.))

These famous 25 propositions had been set forth by MAIMONIDES in his introduction to the second part of the Moreh nebukim (Guide of the perplexed). They soon attracted the attention of philosophers, and within the two centuries following their publication not less than



science and thought in the fifteenth centuryby lynn thorndike

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