The open and inquiring attitude of mind toward the truths of nature is supposed usually to be utterly at variance with the intellectual temper of the Middle Ages. We have heard so much about the submission to authority and the cultivation of tradition on the part of medieval scholars that we forget entirely how much they accomplished in adding to human knowledge, and though they had their limitations of conservatism, they were no more old fogies clinging to old-fashioned ruts than are the older men of each successive generation down even to our own time, in the minds of their younger colleagues. It might seem to be difficult to substantiate such a declaration. It may appear to be a paradox to talk thus. It is not hard to show good reasons for it, and far from being a far-fetched attempt to bolster up an opinion more favorable to the Middle Ages, it is really a very simple expression of what the history of these generations shows that they actually tried to accomplish. Roger Bacon must not be thought to be alone in this. On the contrary, he was only a leader with many followers. Even before his time, however, these ideas as to the necessity for observation had been very forcibly expressed by many, and by no one more than Roger's distinguished teacher, Albertus Magnus, whose name is now becoming familiar to scholars as Albert the Great.
Albert's great pupil, Roger Bacon, is rightly looked upon as the true father of inductive science, an honor that history has unfortunately taken from him to confer [{295}] it undeservedly on his namesake of four centuries later; but the teaching out of which Roger Bacon was to develop the principles of experimental science can be found in many places in the master's writings. In Albert's tenth book, wherein he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed: for in these matters experience alone can give certainty"--experimentum solum certificat in talibus. "Such an expression," says his biographer, "which might have proceeded from the pen of (Francis) Bacon, argues in itself a prodigious scientific progress, and shows that the medieval friar was on the track so successfully pursued by modern natural philosophy. He had fairly shaken off the shackles which had hitherto tied up discovery, and was the slave neither of Pliny nor of Aristotle."
Albert was a theologian rather than a scientist, and yet, deeply versed as he was in theology, he declared in a treatise concerning Heaven and Earth, [Footnote 33] that "in studying nature we have not to enquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to enquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass." This can scarcely fail to seem a surprising declaration to those who have been accustomed to think of medieval philosophers as turning by preference to miraculous explanations of things, but such a notion is founded partly on false tradition, with regard to the real teaching of the medieval [{296}] scholars, and even more on the partisan declarations of those who thought it the proper thing to make as little as possible of the intelligence of the people of the Middle Ages, in order to account for their adhesion to the Catholic Church.
[Footnote 33: De Coelo et Mundo, I. tr. iv., X.]
As a matter of fact, Albert's declaration, far from being an innovation, was only in pursuance of the truly philosophic method which had characterized the writings of the great Christian thinkers from the earlier time. Unfortunately, the declarations of lesser minds are sometimes accepted as having represented the thoughts of men and the policy of the Church. It is not these lesser men, however, who have been in special honor. No one, for instance, can possibly be looked upon as representing Church teaching better than Augustine, who because of the depth of his teaching, yet his wonderful fidelity to Christian dogma, received the formal title of Father of the Church, which carried with it the approval of everything that he had written. There is a well-known quotation from St. Augustine which shows how much he deprecated the attempt to make Scriptures an authority in science, and how much he valued observation as compared with authority, in such matters as are really within the domain of investigation by experiment and observation.
He says: "It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain reasoning or observation" (that is, from the ordinary means at the command of an investigator in natural science), "and it is very disgraceful and mischievous, and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a [{297}] Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing." It is the opinions of such men as Augustine and Albert that must be taken as representing the real attitude of theologians and churchmen toward science, and not those of lesser men, whose zeal, as is ever true of the minor adherents of any cause, always is prone to carry them into unfortunate excesses.
Albert the Great was indeed a thoroughgoing experimentalist in the best modern sense of the term. He says in the second book of his treatise On Minerals (De Mineralibus): "The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, that is, what is narrated by people, but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature for themselves." When we take this expression in connection with the other, that "we must endeavor to find out what nature can naturally bring to pass," the complete foundation of experimentalism is laid. Albert held this principle not only in theory, but applied it in practice.
It is often said that the scholastic philosophers, and notably Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, almost idolatrously worshipped at the shrine of Aristotle, and were ready to accept anything that this great Greek philosopher had taught. We have already quoted Roger Bacon's request to the Pope to forbid the study of the Stagirite. It is interesting to find in this regard, that while Albert declared that in questions of natural science he would prefer to follow Aristotle to St. Augustine--a declaration which may seem surprising to many people [{298}] who have been prone to think that what the Fathers of the Church said medieval scholars followed slavishly--he does not hesitate to point out errors made by the Greek philosopher, nor to criticise his conclusions very freely. In his Treatise on Physics, [Footnote 34] he says, "whoever believes that Aristotle was a god must also believe that he never erred. But if one believe that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to err just as we are." In fact, as is pointed out by the Catholic Encyclopaedia in its article on Albertus Magnus, to which we are indebted for the exact reference of the quotations that we have made, Albert devotes a lengthy chapter in his Summa Theologiae [Footnote 35] to what he calls the errors of Aristotle. His appreciation of Aristotle is always critical. He deserves great credit not only for bringing the scientific teaching of the Stagirite to the attention of medieval scholars, but also for indicating the method and the spirit in which that teaching was to be received.
[Footnote 34: Physica, lib. VIII., tr. i., xiv.]
[Footnote 35: Summa Theologiae, Pars II., tr. i., Quaest iv.]