The theological atmosphere, which in consequence settled down about the great universities and colleges, seemed likely to stifle all scientific effort in every part of Europe, and it is one of the great wonders in human history that in spite of this deadly atmosphere a considerable body of thinking men, under such protection as they could secure, still persisted in devoting themselves to the physical sciences.
In Italy, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, came a striking example of the difficulties which science still encountered even after the Renaissance had undermined the old beliefs. At that time John Baptist Porta was conducting his investigations, and, despite a considerable mixture of pseudo-science, they were fruitful. His was not "black magic," claiming the aid of Satan, but "white magic," bringing into service the laws of nature—the precursor of applied science. His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of several important industries. He did much to change natural philosophy from a black art to a vigorous open science. He encountered the old ecclesiastical policy. The society founded by him for physical research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul III and forbidden to continue his investigations.
So, too, in France. In 1624, some young chemists at Paris having taught the experimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the faculty of theology beset the Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibited these new chemical researches under the severest penalties.
The same war continued in Italy. Even after the belief in magic had been seriously weakened, the old theological fear and dislike of physical science continued. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the Accademia del Cimento at Florence, under the presidency of Prince Leopold de' Medici This academy promised great things for science; it was open to all talent; its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of any favourite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into scientific investigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, and the incompressibility of water were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the world.
The academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious, quarrels were fomented, Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and drawn away to Rome, and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair.
So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred the ill will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful investigators. It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope Gregory XVI. Even in our own time sessions of scientific associations were discouraged and thwarted by as kindly a pontiff as Pius IX.(276)
(276) For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary,
Natural Magick, London, 1658. The first chapters are especially
interesting, as showing what the word "magic" had come to mean in the
mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously mixed;
see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. ii, pp. 102-106; also
Kopp; also Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol. iii, p. 239; also
Musset-Pathay. For the Accademia del Cimento, see Napier, Florentine
History, vol. v, p. 485; Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura; Henri
Martin, Histoire de France; Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii,
pp. 36-40. For value attached to Borelli's investigations by Newton and
Huygens, see Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, London, 1875, pp. 128,
129. Libri, in his first Essai sur Galilee, p. 37, says that Oliva was
summoned to Rome and so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape
further cruelty, he ended his life by throwing himself from a window.
For interference by Pope Gregory XVI with the Academy of the Lincei, and
with public instruction generally, see Carutti, Storia della Accademia
dei Lincei, p. 126. Pius IX, with all his geniality, seems to have
allowed his hostility to voluntary associations to carry him very far
at times. For his answer to an application made through Lord Odo Russell
regarding a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and his
answer that "such an association could not be sanctioned by the Holy
See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed
any duties to animals," see Frances Power Cobbe, Hopes of the Human
Race, p. 207.
A hostility similar in kind, though less in degree, was shown in Protestant countries.
Even after Thomasius in Germany and Voltaire in France and Beccaria in Italy had given final blows to the belief in magic and witchcraft throughout Christendom, the traditional orthodox distrust of the physical sciences continued for a long time.
In England a marked dislike was shown among various leading ecclesiastics and theologians towards the Royal Society, and later toward the Association for the Advancement of Science; and this dislike, as will hereafter be seen, sometimes took shape in serious opposition.