Albert’s fame in the early nineteenth century.
Albert’s scientific fame perhaps reached its zenith shortly before the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. In 1836 and 1837 Ernst Meyer published in Linnaea[1734] his “Albertus Magnus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Botanik im XIII Jahrhundert,” and later in his History of Botany[1735] ranked Albert as the greatest botanist during the long period between Aristotle and Theophrastus on the one hand and Andrea Cesalpini on the other. “Yes, more than that. From Aristotle, the creator of scientific botany, until his time this science sank deeper and deeper with time. With him it arose like the Phoenix from its ashes. That, I think, is praise enough, and this crown shall no one snatch away from him.”[1736] In the meantime, at Paris in 1853, Pouchet had published his History of the Natural Sciences in the Middle Ages with the sub-title, Or Albertus Magnus and his age considered as the point of departure of the experimental school.[1737] But the extreme praise of Albert had occurred a little earlier in lectures on the history of science delivered by De Blainville at the Sorbonne in 1839-1841 and published a few years later.[1738] De Blainville too centered his discussion of medieval science about Albert, to whom alone he devoted some ninety pages, extolling him for affirming the permanence of species and for “broadening” Aristotle to fit the requirements of theology. In ten theses in which De Blainville undertook to sum up briefly the chief legacies of Albert to science, he held that he completed and terminated the circle of human knowledge, adding to Aristotle the scientific demonstration of the relations of man with God; that he extended the scope of observation to every scientific field except anatomy; that he created the description of natural bodies, a thing unknown to the ancients; and that in filling in the gaps in Aristotle’s writings he was the first to embrace all the natural sciences in a complete plan, logical and perfectly followed. “In accepting therefore with the Christian Aristotle,” concluded De Blainville, “the first verse of Genesis, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth,’ and the consequences which follow it, we have, in my opinion, reached the apogée of the encyclopedia of human knowledge, which can now only extend itself in respect to the number and the deeper knowledge of material objects.”
A survival of the medieval attitude.
This passage from De Blainville, who seems to have been a Roman Catholic, is very interesting as showing how the progress of modern science in his own time and the centuries just preceding could be almost completely miscomprehended by a professed historian of science. We must not, however, suppose that such misconceptions of the progress of science were universal or even general in the first half of the nineteenth century. The article on Albertus Magnus in the Histoire Littéraire de la France, which was published in 1838, recognizes that Albert did not extend the bounds of the sciences as much as had been supposed, and that progress had been made since the sixteenth century which rendered that part of his works “almost useless.”[1739] The passage from De Blainville is interesting also as showing the same intimate connection presupposed between Christian theology, natural science, and Aristotelianism as in the days of the great Dominicans themselves. Again, it reveals the extent to which natural science, since the appearance of The Origin of Species, has tended to the opposite extreme.
Recent historians of science and Albert.
As for historians of science, they have been rather scarcer of late than in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, when the subject seems to have had a great vogue in France. Or at least the historians of science have been less sympathetic with the distant past. Perhaps the inclination has been to go almost as far toward the other pole of neglect as De Blainville went toward that of extollation. But the modern eulogies of the scientific attainments of Roger Bacon, supposed to be a thorn in the side of the medieval church and falsely regarded as its victim, and as the one lone scientific spirit of the middle ages, have been rather more absurd than the earlier praises of Albert, who was represented both as a strong pillar in the church and the backbone of medieval and Christian science. Indeed, the Histoire Littéraire, in the same passage which we a moment ago quoted against De Blainville, also states with probable justification that Albert did “more than any other doctor of his day” to introduce the natural sciences into the course of public and private studies, and that it was his taste for those subjects which won him his popular renown and the homage of scholars until the end of the seventeenth century. At no period, however, has Albert been entirely without defenders. Jessen in 1867 regarded him as an original natural scientist. Stadler in 1906 recognized that “he made many independent observations, perhaps even carried out experiments,” and showed great interest in biology.[1740]
Albert’s scientific spirit.
Coming back from the opinions of others concerning Albert to his own attitude towards natural science, it is to be noted that, while he may make all sorts of mistakes judged by modern standards, he does show unmistakable signs of the scientific spirit. This will become more apparent as we proceed, but for the present we may cite two examples of it, and these from a work based upon a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise and one which at first sight might seem quite superstitious and unscientific to the modern reader, since it is full of astrology, the De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum.[1741] In the first passage Albert repeats the justification of natural science against a narrow religious attitude which we heard from the lips of William of Conches in the previous century. When Albert finds that some men attribute the deluge simply to the divine will and believe that no other cause for it should be sought, he replies that he too ascribes it ultimately to the divine will, but that he believes that God acts through natural causes in the case of natural phenomena, and that, while he would not presume to search the causes of the divine will, he does feel free to investigate those natural causes which were the divine instruments. A little further on in the same chapter Albert declares that “it is not enough to know in terms of universals, but we seek to know each object’s own peculiar characteristics, for this is the best and perfect kind of science.”[1742]
Philosophical generalization and scientific detail.
This desire for concrete, specific, detailed, accurate knowledge concerning everything in nature is felt by Albert in other of his writings to be scarcely in the spirit of the Aristotelian natural philosophy which he follows and sets forth in his parallel treatises. In his work on animals a cleavage may be observed between those parts where Albert discusses the general natures and common characteristics of animals and seems to follow Aristotle rather closely, and those books where he lists and describes particular animals with numerous allusions to recent experience and considerable criticism of past authorities. At the beginning of his twenty-second book he apologizes for listing particular animals in alphabetical order, which is “not appropriate to philosophy,” by saying that “we know we are debtors both to the wise and to the unlearned, and those things which are told in particular terms better instruct a rustic intelligence.” But while this desire to describe particular objects precisely is felt by Albert to be not in accord with traditional philosophic methods of presentation, it is a desire which many of his contemporaries share with him. At the beginning of his sixth book on vegetables and plants, where particular herbs and trees are listed, he explains, “In this sixth book of vegetables we satisfy the curiosity of our students rather than philosophy, for philosophy cannot deal with particulars.”