Minerals and experience.
Albert’s general attitude towards past authorities and present experience remains the same in his treatise on minerals. He will give the names of the important gems and state their virtues as known from authorities and experience, but he will not repeat everything that has been said about precious stones because it is not profitable for science. “For natural science is not simply receiving what one is told, but the investigation of causes in natural phenomena.”[1787] Concerning metals, too, he intends to state “rationally either what has been handed down by the philosophers or what I myself have experienced.”[1788] He adds that once he wandered far in exile to places rich in mines in order that he might test the natures of metals. “And for this same reason I investigated the transmutation of metals among the alchemists, in order that I might observe something of the nature and characteristics of the metals.” In a later chapter he alludes to workers in copper “in our parts, namely, Paris and Cologne, and in other places where I have been and seen things tested by experience.”[1789] Fui et vidi experiri, such is Albert the Great’s peaceful paraphrase, probably unintentional, for warring Caesar’s Veni, vidi, vici.
Minerals and credulity.
Again, also, in the treatise on minerals, reliance upon experience proves to be no sure guarantee against incorrect notions, credulity, and unquestioning trust in authority. Albert still repeats[1790] the old notion that “adamant,” hard as it is, is softened and dissolved by the blood and flesh of a goat, especially if the goat for some time before has been fed on a diet of certain herbs and wine.[1791] He adds that this property of goat’s blood makes it beneficial for sufferers from stone in the bladder. Albert repeats with a qualifying “It is said” the statement that the emerald comes from the nests of gryphons or griffins,[1792] but he does not stop to deny the existence of those birds, as we have heard him do elsewhere. He adds, however, as to the source of the emerald that “a truthful and curious experimenter coming from Greece” had said that it was produced in rocks under the sea. This expression, “curious experimenter” (curiosus experimentator), or perhaps better “inquisitive observer,” Albert also applied to one of his associates who saw Frederick II’s peculiar magnet.[1793] In the present discussion of the emerald he adds that experience in his own time has proved that this stone, “if good and true,” cannot endure sexual intercourse, so that the reigning king of Hungary, who was wearing an emerald upon his finger when he went in to his wife, broke it into three pieces. “And that is probably why they say that this stone inclines its wearer to chastity.”
Tale of a toad and an emerald.
Albert, however, had told as a personal experience a stranger tale than this of an emerald in his work on vegetables and plants in order to illustrate “the many effects of stones and plants which are known by experience and by which wonders are worked.” But as a matter of fact, the incident is concerned not with an emerald and a plant, but an emerald and a toad, an animal which one would infer was in Albert’s day often the subject of experiment.
“An emerald was recently seen among us, small in size but marvelous in beauty. When its virtue was to be tested, someone stepped forth and said that, if a circle was made about a toad with the emerald and then the stone was set before the toad’s eyes, one of two things would happen. Either the stone, if of weak virtue, would be broken by the gaze of the toad; or the toad would burst, if the stone was possessed of full natural vigor. Without delay things were arranged as he bade; and after a short lapse of time, during which the toad kept its eye unswervingly upon the gem, the latter began to crack like a nut and a portion of it flew from the ring. Then the toad, which had stood immovable hitherto, withdrew as if it had been freed from the influence of the gem.”[1794]
Experience versus Aristotle.
In the incident just narrated Albert was perhaps tricked by some traveling magician. But let us conclude our discussion of his general scientific method by some more rational instances of personal observation and experience. In his treatise on meteorology his discussion of the rainbow, which occupies some twenty-four pages of Borgnet’s text,[1795] is especially based upon experience and full of allusions to it—a very interesting fact in view of the large space which the discussion of the rainbow occupies in Roger Bacon’s better known eulogy of experimental science. Albert recounts his own observations when sailing over great waves or when looking down from the top of a castle built upon a high mountain, “and the time when this was seen was in the morning after a rainy night, and it was in the autumn with the sun in the sign of Virgo.” Albert takes exception to Aristotle’s assertion that rainbows caused by the moon at night appear only twice in fifty years. He and many others have seen a bow at night, and “truthful experimenters have found by experience” (veridici experimentatores experti sunt) that a rainbow has appeared twice at night in the same year. Nor can Albert conceive of any astronomical reason why it should appear only twice in fifty years. “And so I think that Aristotle stated this from the opinions of others and not from the truth of demonstration or experience, while those facts which have been adduced against his statement have been experienced beyond a doubt by myself and by other reliable investigators associated with me.” The very chapter headings of this portion of Albert’s treatise suggest an antithesis between the ancient authorities and recent experimental investigation, for instance: “Of the Iris of the Moon and what Ancients have said of it and what Moderns have tested by experience,”[1796] and “A Digression stating Seneca’s views concerning virgae and experiments with certain arcs seen in modern times.”[1797] Thus while Albert of course believes that the statements of many of his authorities are based upon experience, he seems to feel that he and his associates have founded an important modern school for the investigation of nature at first hand. We may choose to regard it as a mere school of observation, but he dignifies its members by the title of experimentatores. Again therefore we may admit that Pouchet was not unjustified in associating Albert with the modern experimental school.