NEW ATTITUDES AFTER THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. From the beginning of the twelfth century onward, as we have already noted, there had been a slow but gradual change in the character of human thinking, and a slow but certain disintegration of the Mediaeval System, with its repressive attitude toward all independent thinking. Many different influences and movements had contributed to this change—the Moslem learning and civilization in Spain, the recovery of the old legal and medical knowledge, the revival of city life, the beginnings anew of commerce and industry, the evolution of the universities, the rise of a small scholarly class, the new consciousness of nationality, the evolution of the modern languages, the beginnings of a small but important vernacular literature, and the beginnings of travel and exploration following the Crusades—all of which had tended to transform the mediaeval man and change his ways of thinking. New objects of interest slowly came to the front, and new standards of judgment gradually were applied. In consequence the mediaeval man, with his feeling of personal insignificance and lack of self- confidence, came to be replaced by a small but increasing number of men who were conscious of their powers, possessed a new self-confidence, and realized new possibilities of intellectual accomplishment.

The Revival of Learning, first in Italy and then elsewhere in western Europe, was the natural consequence of this awakening of the modern spirit, and in the careful work done by the humanistic scholars of the Italian Renaissance in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring, criticizing, and editing the texts, and in reconstructing the ancient life and history, we see the beginnings of the modern scientific spirit. It was this same critical, questioning spirit which, when applied later to geographical knowledge, led to the discovery of America and the circumnavigation of the globe; which, when applied to matters of Christian faith, brought on the Protestant Revolts; which, when applied to the problems of the universe, revealed the many wonderful fields of modern science; and which, when applied to government, led to a questioning of the divine right of kings and the rise of constitutional government. The awakening of scientific inquiry and the scientific spirit, and the attempt of a few thinkers to apply the new method to education, to which we now turn, may be regarded as only another phase of the awakening of the modern inquisitive spirit which found expression earlier in the rise of the universities, the recovery and reconstruction of the ancient learning, the awakening of geographical discovery and exploration, and the questioning of the doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval Church.

INSUFFICIENCY OF ANCIENT SCIENCE. From the point of view of scientific inquiry, all ancient learning possessed certain marked fundamental defects. The Greeks had—their time and age in world-civilization considered—made many notable scientific observations and speculations, and had prepared the way for future advances. Thales (636?-546? B.C.), Xenophanes (628?-520? B.C.), Anaximenes (557-504 B.C.), Pythagoras (570- 500 B.C.), Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.), Empedocles (460?-361? B.C.), and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) had all made interesting speculations as to the nature of matter, [1] Aristotle finally settling the question by naming the world-elements as earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Hippocrates (460-367? B.C.), as we have seen (p. 197), had observed the sick and had recorded and organized his observations in such a manner [2] as to form the foundations upon which the science of medicine could be established. The Greek physician, Galen (130-200 A.D.) added to these observations, and their combined work formed the basis upon which modern medical science has slowly been built up.

On the other hand, some of what each wrote was mere speculation and error, [3] and modern physicians were compelled to begin all over and along new lines before any real progress in medicine could be made. Aristotle had done a notable work in organizing and codifying Greek scientific knowledge, as the list of his many scientific treatises in use in Europe by 1300 (R. 87) will show, but his writings were the result of a mixture of keen observation and brilliant speculation, contained many inaccuracies, and in time, due to the reverence accorded him as an authority by the mediaeval scholars and the church authorities, proved serious obstacles to real scientific progress.

At Alexandria the most notable Greek scientific work had been done. Euclid (323-283 B.C.) in geometry; Aristarchus (third century B.C.), who explained the motion of the earth; Eratosthenes (270-196 B.C.), who measured the size of the earth; Archimedes (270?-212 B.C.), a pupil of Euclid's, who applied science in many ways and laid the foundations of dynamics; Hipparchus (160-125 B.C.), the father of astronomy, who studied the heavens and catalogued the stars, were among the more famous Greeks who studied and taught there in the days when Alexandria had succeeded Athens as the intellectual capital of the Greek world. Some remarkable advances also were made in the study of human anatomy and medicine by two Greeks, Herophilus (335-280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (d. 280 B.C.), who apparently did much dissecting.

But even at Alexandria the promise of Greek science was unfulfilled. Despite many notable speculations and scientific advances, the hopeful beginnings did not come to any large fruitage, and the great contribution made by the Greeks to world civilization was less along scientific lines than along the lines of literature and philosophy. Their great strength lay in the direction of philosophic speculation, and this tendency to speculate, rather than to observe and test and measure and record, was the fundamental weakness of all Greek science. The Greeks never advanced in scientific work to the invention and perfection of instruments for the standardization of their observations. As a result they passed on to the mediaeval world an extensive "book science" and not a little keen observation, of which the works of Aristotle and the Alexandrian mathematicians and astronomers form the most conspicuous examples, but little scientific knowledge of which the modern world has been able to make much use. The "book science" of the Greeks, and especially that of Aristotle, was highly prized for centuries, but in time, due to the many inaccuracies, had to be discarded and done anew by modern scholars.

The Romans, as we have seen (chapter III), were essentially a practical people, good at getting the work of the world done, but not much given to theoretical discussion or scientific speculation. They were organizers, governors, engineers, executives, and literary workers rather than scientists. They executed many important undertakings of a practical character, such as the building of roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings; organized government and commerce on a large scale; and have left us a literature and a legal system of importance, but they contributed little to the realm of pure science. The three great names in science in all their history are Strabo the geographer (63 B.C.-24 A.D.); Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), who did notable work as an observer in natural history; and Galen (a Roman-Greek), in medicine. They, like the Greeks, were pervaded by the same fear that their science might prove useful, whereas they cultivated it largely as a mental exercise (R. 203).

THE CHRISTIAN REACTION AGAINST INQUIRY. The Christian attitude toward inquiry was from the first inhospitable, and in time became exceedingly intolerant. The tendency of the Western Church, it will be remembered (p. 94), was from the first to reject all Hellenic learning, and to depend upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the third century the hostility to pagan schools and Hellenic learning had become so pronounced that the Apostolic Constitutions (R. 41) ordered Christians to abstain from all heathen books, which could contain nothing of value and only served "to subvert the faith of the unstable." In 401 A.D. the Council of Carthage forbade the clergy to read any heathen author, and Greek learning now rapidly died out in the West. For a time it was almost entirely lost. In consequence Greek science, then best represented by Alexandrian learning, and which contained much that was of great importance, was rejected along with other pagan learning. The, very meager scientific knowledge that persisted into the Middle Ages in the great mediaeval textbooks (p. 162), as we have seen in the study of the Seven Liberal Arts (chapter VII), came to be regarded as useful only in explaining passages of Scripture or in illustrating the ways of God toward man. The one and only science worthy of study was Theology, to which all other learning tended (see Figure 44, p. 154).

The history of Christianity throughout all the Dark Ages is a history of the distrust of inquiry and reason, and the emphasis of blind emotional faith. Mysticism, good and evil spirits, and the interpretation of natural phenomena as manifestations of the Divine will from the first received large emphasis. The worship of saints and relics, and the great development of the sensuous and symbolic, changed the earlier religion into a crude polytheism. During the long period of the Middle Ages the miraculous flourished. The most extreme superstition pervaded all ranks of society. Magic and prayers were employed to heal the sick, restore the crippled, foretell the future, and punish the wicked. Sacred pools, the royal touch, wonder-working images, and miracles through prayer stood in the way of the development of medicine (R. 204). Disease was attributed to satanic influence, and a regular schedule of prayers for cures was in use. Sanitation was unknown. Plagues and pestilences were manifestations of Divine wrath, and hysteria and insanity were possession by the devil to be cast out by whipping and torture. One's future was determined by the position of the heavenly bodies at the time of birth. Eclipses, meteors, and comets were fearful portents of Divine displeasure:

Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid rage;
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change. [4]

The literature on magic was extensive. The most miraculous happenings were recorded and believed. Trial by ordeal, following careful religious formulae, was common before 1200, though prohibited shortly afterward by papal decrees (1215, 1222). The insistence of the Church on "the willful, devilish character of heresy," and the extension of heresy to cover almost any form of honest doubt or independent inquiry, caused an intellectual stagnation along lines of scientific investigation which was not relieved for more than a thousand years. The many notable advances in physics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine made by Moslem scholars (chapter VIII) were lost on Christian Europe, and had to be worked out again centuries later by the scholars of the western world. Out of the astronomy of the Arabs the Christians got only astrology; out of their chemistry they got only alchemy. Both in time stood seriously in the way of real scientific thinking and discovery.

GROWING TOLERANCE CHANGED BY THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS. After the rise of the universities, the expansion of the minds of men which followed the Crusades and the revival of trade and industry, the awakening which came with the revival of the old learning and the rise of geographical discovery, the church authorities assumed a broader and a more tolerant attitude toward inquiry and reason than had been the case for hundreds of years. It would have been surprising, with the large number of university- trained men entering the service of the Church, had this not been the case. By the middle of the fifteenth century it looked as though the Renaissance spirit might extend into many new directions, and by 1500 the world seemed on the eve of important progress in almost every line of endeavor. As was pointed out earlier (p. 259), the Church was more tolerant than it had been for centuries, and about the year 1500 was the most stimulating time in the history of our civilization since the days of Alexandria and ancient Rome.

In 1517 Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The Church took alarm and attempted to crush him, and soon the greatest contest since the conflict between paganism and Christianity was on. Within half a century all northern lands had been lost to the ancient Church (see map, p. 296); the first successful challenge of its authority during its long history.

The effect of these religious revolts on the attitude of the Church toward intellectual liberty was natural and marked. The tolerance of inquiry recently extended was withdrawn, and an era of steadily increasing intolerance set in which was not broken for more than a century. In an effort to stop the further spread of the heresy, the Church Council of Trent (1545-63) adopted stringent regulations against heretical teachings (p. 303), while the sword and torch and imprisonment were resorted to to stamp out opposition and win back the revolting lands. A century of merciless warfare ensued, and the hatreds engendered by the long and bitter struggle over religious differences put both Catholic and Protestant Europe in no tolerant frame of mind toward inquiry or new ideas. The Inquisition, a sort of universal mediaeval grand jury for the detection and punishment of heretics, was revived, and the Jesuits, founded in 1534-40, were vigorous in defense of the Church and bitter in their opposition to all forms of independent inquiry and Protestant heresy.

It was into this post-Reformation atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred that the new critical, inquiring, questioning spirit of science, as applied to the forces of the universe, was born. A century earlier the first scientists might have obtained a respectful hearing, and might have been permitted to press their claims; after the Protestant Revolts had torn Christian Europe asunder this could hardly be. As a result the early scientists found themselves in no enviable position. Their theories were bitterly assailed as savoring of heresy; their methods and purposes were alike suspected; and any challenge of an old long-accepted idea was likely to bring a punishment that was swift and sure. From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century was not a time when new ideas were at a premium anywhere in western Europe. It was essentially a period of reaction, and periods of reaction are not favorable to intellectual progress. It was into this century of reaction that modern scientific inquiry and reasoning, itself another form of expression of the intellectual attitudes awakened by the work of the humanistic scholars of the Italian Renaissance, made its first claim for a hearing.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHOD. One of the great problems which has always deeply interested thinking men in all lands is the nature and constitution of the material universe, and to this problem people in all stages of civilization have worked out for themselves some kind of an answer. It was one of the great speculations of the Greeks, and it was at Alexandria, in the period of its decadence, that the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy (138 A.D.) had offered an explanation which was accepted by Christian Europe and which dominated all thinking on the subject during the Middle Ages. He had concluded that the earth was located at the center of the visible universe, immovable, and that the heavenly bodies moved around the earth, in circular motion, fixed in crystalline spheres. [5] This explanation accorded perfectly with Christian ideas as to creation, as well as with Christian conceptions as to the position and place of man and his relation to the heavens above and to a hell beneath. This theory was obviously simple and satisfactory, and became sanctified with time. As we see it now the wonder is that such an explanation could have been accepted for so long. Only among an uninquisitive people could so imperfect a theory have endured for over fourteen centuries.

[Illustration: FIG. 113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (Copernicus), (1473-1543)]

In 1543 a Bohemian church canon and physician by the name of Nicholas Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium, in which he set forth the explanation of the universe which we now know. He piously dedicated the work to Pope Paul III, and wisely refrained from publishing it until the year of his death. [6] Anything so completely upsetting the Christian conception as to the place and position of man in the universe could hardly be expected to be accepted, particularly at the time of its publication, without long and bitter opposition.

In the dedicatory letter (R. 205), Copernicus explains how, after feeling that the Ptolemaic explanation was wrong, he came to arrive at the conclusions he did. The steps he set forth form an excellent example of a method of thinking now common, but then almost unknown. They were:

1. Dissatisfaction with the old Ptolemaic explanation.

2. A study of all known literature, to see if any better explanation
had been offered.

3. Careful thought on the subject, until his thinking took form in a
definite theory.

4. Long observation and testing out, to see if the observed facts
would support his theory.

5. The theory held to be correct, because it reduced all known facts
to a systematic order and harmony.

This is as clear a case of inductive reasoning as was L. Valla's exposure of the forgery of the so-called "Donation of Constantine," an example of deductive reasoning. Both used a new method—the method of modern scholarship. In both cases the results were revolutionary. As Petrarch stands forth in history as the first modern classical scholar, so Copernicus stands forth as the first modern scientific thinker. The beginnings of all modern scientific investigation date from 1543. Of his work a recent writer (E. C. J. Morton) has said:

Copernicus cannot be said to have flooded with light the dark places of nature—in the way that one stupendous mind subsequently did— but still, as we look back through the long vista of the history of science, the dim Titanic figure of the old monk seems to rear itself out of the dull flats around it, pierces with its head the mists that overshadow them, and catches the first gleam of the rising sun,…

Like some iron peak, by the Creator
Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.

[Illustration: FIG. 114. TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601)]

THE NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY APPLIED BY OTHERS. At first Copernicus' work attracted but little attention. An Italian Dominican by the name of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), deeply impressed by the new theory, set forth in Latin and Italian the far-reaching and majestic implications of such a theory of creation, and was burned at the stake at Rome for his pains. A Dane, Tycho Brahe, after twenty-one years of careful observation of the heavens, during which time he collected "a magnificent series of observations, far transcending in accuracy [7] and extent anything that had been accomplished by his predecessors," showed Aristotle to be wrong in many particulars. His observations of the comet of 1577 led him to conclude that the theory of crystalline spheres was impossible, and that the common view of the time as to their nature [8] was absurd. In 1609 a German by the name of Johann Kepler (1571-1630), using the records of observations which Tycho Brahe had accumulated and applying them to the planet Mars, proved the truth of the Copernican theory and framed his famous three laws for planetary motion.

[Illustration: FIG. 115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)]

Finally an Italian, Galileo Galilei, a professor at the University of Pisa, developing a telescope that would magnify to eight diameters, discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's rings. The story of his discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is another interesting illustration of the careful scientific reasoning of these early workers (R. 206). Galileo also made a number of discoveries in physics, through the use of new scientific methods, which completely upset the teachings of the Aristotelians, and made the most notable advances in mechanics since the days of Archimedes. For his pronounced advocacy of the Copernican theory he was called to Rome (1615) by the Cardinals of the Inquisition, the Copernican theory was condemned as "absurd in philosophy" and as "expressly contrary to Holy Scripture," and Galileo was compelled to recant (1616) his error. [9] For daring later (1632) to assume that he might, under a new Pope, defend the Copernican theory, even in an indirect manner, he was again called before the inquisitorial body, compelled to recant and abjure his errors (R. 207) to escape the stake, and was then virtually made a prisoner of the Inquisition for the remainder of his life. So strongly had the forces of medievalism reasserted themselves after the Protestant Revolts!

[Illustration: FIG. 116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)]

Finally the English scholar Newton (1642-1728), in his Principia (1687), settled permanently all discussions as to the Copernican theory by his wonderful mathematical studies. He demonstrated mathematically the motions of the planets and comets, proved Kepler's laws to be true, explained gravitation and the tides, made clear the nature of light, and reduced dynamics to a science. Of his work a recent writer, Karl Pearson, has said:

The Newtonian laws of motion form the starting point of most modern treatises on dynamics, and it seems to me that physical science, thus started, resembles the mighty genius of an Arabian tale emerging amid metaphysical exhalations from the bottle in which for long centuries it had been corked down.

So far-reaching in its importance was the scientific work of Newton that
Pope's couplet seems exceedingly applicable:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.

THE NEW METHOD APPLIED IN OTHER FIELDS. The new method of study was soon applied to other fields by scholars of the new type, here and there, and always with fruitful results. The Englishman, William Gilbert (1540-1603) published, in 1600, his De Arte Magnetica, and laid the foundations of the modern study of electricity and magnetism. A German-Swiss by the name of Hohenheim, but who Latinized his name to Paracelsus (1493-1541), and who became a professor in the medical faculty at the University of Basle, in 1526 broke with mediaeval traditions by being one of the first university scholars to refuse to lecture in Latin. He ridiculed the medical theories of Hippocrates (p. 197) and Galen (p. 198), and, regarding the human body as a chemical compound, began to treat diseases by the administration of chemicals. A Saxon by the name of Landmann, who also Latinized his name to Agricola (1494-1555), applied chemistry to mining and metallurgy, and a French potter named Bernard Palissy (c. 1500- 88) applied chemistry to pottery and the arts. To Paracelsus, Agricola, and Palissy we are indebted for having laid, in the sixteenth century, the foundations of the study of modern chemistry.

[Illustration: FIG. 117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)]

A Belgian by the name of Vesalius (1514-64) was the first modern to dissect the human body, and for so doing was sentenced by the Inquisition to perform a penitential journey to Jerusalem. One of his disciples discovered the valves in the veins and was the teacher of the Englishman, William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and later (1628) dared to publish the fact to the world. These men established the modern studies of anatomy and physiology. Another early worker was a Swiss by the name of Conrad Gessner (1516-65), who observed and wrote extensively on plants and animals, and who stands as the first naturalist of modern times.

The sixteenth century thus marks the rise of modern scientific inquiry, and the beginnings of the study of modern science. The number of scholars engaged in the study was still painfully small, and the religious prejudice against which they worked was strong and powerful, but in the work of these few men we have not only the beginnings of the study of modern astronomy, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, medicine, anatomy, physiology, and natural history, but also the beginnings of a group of men, destined in time to increase greatly in number, who could see straight, and who sought facts regardless of where they might lead and what preconceived ideas they might upset. How deeply the future of civilization is indebted to such men, men who braved social ostracism and often the wrath of the Church as well, for the, to them, precious privilege of seeing things as they are, we are not likely to over- estimate. In time their work was destined to reach the schools, and to materially modify the character of all education.

[Illustration: FIG. 118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)]

HUMAN REASON IN THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE. To the English statesman and philosopher, Francis Bacon, more than to any one else, are we indebted for the proper formulation and statement of this new scientific method. Though not a scientist himself, he has often been termed "the father of modern science." Seeing clearly the importance of the new knowledge, he broke entirely with the old scholastic deductive logic as expressed in the Organon, of Aristotle, and formulated and expressed the methods of inductive reasoning in his Novum Organum, published in 1620. In this he showed the insufficiency of the method of argumentation; analyzed and formulated the inductive method of reasoning, of which his study as to the nature of heat [10] is a good example; and pointed out that knowledge is a process, and not an end in itself; and indicated the immense and fruitful field of science to which the method might be applied. By showing how to learn from nature herself he turned the Renaissance energy into a new direction, and made a revolutionary break with the disputations and deductive logic of the Aristotelian scholastics which had for so long dominated university instruction.

In formulating the new method he first pointed out the defects of the learning of his time, which he classified under the head of "distempers," three in number, and as follows:

1. Fantastic learning: Alchemy, magic, miracles, old-wives, tales, credulities, superstitions, pseudo-science, and impostures of all sorts inherited from an ignorant past, and now conserved as treasures of knowledge.

2. Contentious learning: The endless disputations of the Scholastics about questions which had lost their significance, deductive in character, not based on any observation, not aimed primarily to arrive at truth, "fruitful of controversy, and barren of effect."

3. Delicate learning: The new learning of the humanistic Renaissance, verbal and not real, stylish and polished but not socially important, and leading to nothing except a mastery of itself.

As an escape from these three types of distempers, which well characterized the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries, Bacon offered the inductive method, by means of which men would be able to distinguish true from false, learn to see straight, create useful knowledge, and fill in the great gaps in the learning of the time by actually working out new knowledge from the unknown. The collecting, organizing, comparing, questioning, and inferring spirit of the humanistic revival he now turned in a new direction by organizing and formulating for the work a new Organum to take the place of the old Organon of Aristotle. In Book 1 he sets forth some of the difficulties (R. 208) with which those who try new experiments or work out new methods of study have to contend from partisans of old ideas.

The Novum Organum showed the means of escape from the errors of two thousand years by means of a new method of thinking and work. Bacon did not invent the new method—it had been used since man first began to reason about phenomena, and was the method by means of which Wycliffe, Luther, Magellan, Copernicus, Brahe, and Gilbert had worked—but he was the first to formulate it clearly and to point out the vast field of new and useful knowledge that might be opened up by applying human reason, along inductive lines, to the investigation of the phenomena of nature. His true service to science lay in the completeness of his analysis of the inductive process, and his declaration that those who wish to arrive at useful discoveries must travel by that road. As Macaulay well says, in his essay on Bacon:

He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine of wealth which had been utterly neglected, and which was accessible by that road alone.

To stimulate men to the discovery of useful truth, to turn the energies of mankind—even slowly—from assumption and disputation to patient experimentation, [11.] and to give an impress to human thinking which it has retained for centuries, is, as Macaulay well says, "the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits." Macaulay's excellent summary of the importance of Bacon's work (R. 209) is well worth reading at this point.

THE NEW METHOD IN THE HANDS OF SUBSEQUENT WORKERS. By the middle of the seventeenth century many important advances had been made in many different lines of scientific work. In the two centuries between 1450 and 1650, the foundations of modern mathematics and mechanics had been laid. At the beginning of the period Arabic notation and the early books of Euclid were about all that were taught; at its end the western world had worked out decimals, symbolic algebra, much of plane and spherical trigonometry, mechanics, logarithms (1614) and conic sections (1637), and was soon to add the calculus (1667-87). Mercator had published the map of the world (1569) which has ever since born his name, and the Gregorian calendar had been introduced (1572). The barometer, thermometer, air-pump, pendulum clock, and the telescope had come into use in the period. Alchemy had passed over into modern chemistry; and the astrologer was finding less and less to do as the astronomer took his place. The English Hippocrates, Thomas Sydenham (1624-89), during this period laid the foundations of modern medical study, and the microscope was applied to the study of organic forms. Modern ideas as to light and optics and gases, and the theory of gravitation, were about to be set forth. All these advances had been made during the century following the epoch-making labors of Copernicus, the first modern scientific man to make an impression on the thinking of mankind.

[Illustration: FIG. 119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES Each short horizontal line indicates the life-span of a very distinguished scholar in the science. Mohammedan scientists have not been included. The relative neglect or ignorance of a science has been indicated by the depth of the shading. The great loss to civilization caused by the barbarian inroads and the hostile attitude of the early Church is evident.]

Accompanying this new scientific work there arose, among a few men in each of the western European countries, an interest in scientific studies such as the world had not witnessed since the days of the Alexandrian Greek. This interest found expression in the organization of scientific societies, wholly outside the universities of the time, for the reporting of methods and results, and for the mingling together in sympathetic companionship of these seekers after new truth. The most important dates connected with the rise of these societies are:

1603. The Lyncean Society at Rome. 1619. Jungius founded the Natural Science Association at Rostock. 1645. The Royal Society of London began to meet; constituted in 1660; chartered in 1662. 1657. The Academia del Cimento at Florence. 1662. The Imperial Academy of Germany. 1666. The Academy of Sciences in France. 1675. The National Observatory at Greenwich established.

After 1650 the advance of science was rapid. The spirit of modern inquiry, which in the sixteenth century had animated but a few minds, by the middle of the seventeenth had extended to all the principal countries of Europe. The striking results obtained during the seventeenth century revealed the vast field waiting to be explored, and filled many independent modern-type scholars with an enthusiasm for research in the new domain of science. By the close of the eighteenth century the main outlines of most of the modern sciences had been established.

LEADING THINKERS OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITIES. During the seventeenth century, and largely during the eighteenth as well, the extreme conservatism of the universities, their continued control by their theological faculties, and their continued devotion to theological controversy and the teachings of state orthodoxy rather than the advancement of knowledge, served to make of them such inhospitable places for the new scientific method that practically all the leading workers with it were found outside the universities. This was less true of England than other lands, but was in part true of English universities as well. As civil servants, court attachÉs, pensioners of royalty, or as private citizens of means they found, as independent scholars reporting to the recently formed scientific societies, a freedom for investigation and a tolerance of ideas then scarcely possible anywhere in the university world.

[Illustration: FIG. 120. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)]

Tycho Brahe and Kepler were pensioners of the Emperor at Prague. Lord Bacon was a lawyer and political leader, and became a peer of England. Descartes, the mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, to whom we are indebted for conic sections; Napier, inventor of logarithms; and Ray and Willoughby, who did the first important work in botany and zoology in England, were all independent scholars. The air-pump was invented by the Burgomaster of Madgeburg. Huygens, the astronomer and inventor of the clock was a pensioner of the King of France. Cassini, who explained the motion of Jupiter's satellites, was Astronomer Royal at Paris. Halley, who demonstrated the motions of the moon and who first predicted the return of a comet, held a similar position at Greenwich. Van Helmont and Boyle, who together laid the foundations of our chemical knowledge, were both men of noble lineage who preferred the study of the new sciences to a life of ease at court. Harvey was a physician and demonstrator of anatomy in London. Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, was a pensioner of Cromwell and a physician in Westminster. The German mathematical scholar, Leibnitz, who jointly with Newton discovered the calculus, scorned a university professorship and remained an attachÉ of a German court. Newton, though for a time a professor at Cambridge, during most of his mature life held the royal office of Warden of the Mint. These are a few notable illustrations of scientific scholars of the first rank who remained outside the universities to obtain advantages and freedom not then to be found within their walls. Much these same conditions continued throughout most of the eighteenth century, during which many remarkable advances in all lines of pure science were made. By the close of this century the universities had been sufficiently modernized that scientific workers began to find in them an atmosphere conducive to scientific teaching and research; during the nineteenth century they became the homes of scientific progress and instruction; to-day they are deeply interested in the promotion of scientific research.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Show that the rise of scientific inquiry was but another manifestation of the same inquiring spirit which had led to the recovery of the ancient literatures and history.

2. What do you understand to be meant by the failure of the Greeks to standardize their observations by instruments?

3. Show that it would be possible largely to determine the character of a civilization, if one knew only the prevailing ideas and conceptions as to scientific and religious matters.

4. Show the two different types of reasoning involved in the deduction of L. Valla (p. 246) and the induction of Copernicus.

5. Of which type was the reasoning of Galileo as to Jupiter's satellites?

6. Show that the three "distempers" described by Bacon characterize the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries.

7. How do you explain the long rejection of the new sciences by the universities?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

203. Macaulay: Attitude of the Ancients toward Scientific Inquiry. 204. Franck: The Credulity of Mediaeval People. 205. Copernicus: How he arrived at the theory he set forth. 206. Brewster: Galileo's Discovery of the Satellites of Jupiter. 207. Inquisition: The Abjuration of Galileo. 208. Bacon: On Scientific Progress. 209. Macaulay: The Importance of Bacon's Work.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. How do you explain the attitude of the ancients toward scientific inquiry?

2. State the ancient purpose in pursuing scientific studies.

3. Contrast Bacon and Plato as to aims.

4. Show that the thinking of Copernicus as to the motions of the heavenly bodies was an excellent example of deductive thinking.

5. Show that the discovery and reasoning of Galileo was an example of the common method of reasoning of to-day.

6. Were the difficulties that surrounded scientific inquiry and progress, as described by Bacon, easily removed?

7. Explain the readiness with which the clergy have so commonly opposed scientific inquiry for fear that the results might upset preconceived theological ideas.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Ball, W. R. R. History of Mathematics at Cambridge.
* Libby, Walter. An Introduction to the History of Science.
Ornstein, Martha. Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth
Century.
* Routledge, Robert. A Popular History of Science.
* Sedgwick, W. T. and Tyler, H. W. A Short History of Science.
* White, A. D. History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 2
vols. Wordsworth Christopher. Scholae Academicae; Studies at the
English Universities in the Eighteenth Century.