How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (29 page)

The faculty also ran the university. They elected a rector or chancellor to administer the institution—though, in a reflection of the faculty’s power, the Paris rector’s term was limited to just three months.
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As Haskins pointed out, “As there were no endowments of importance there were no trustees, nor was there any system of state control.… Administration in the modern sense was strikingly absent.… In a quite remarkable degree the university was self-governing.”
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How, then, were universities funded? How were faculty paid? Entirely by student fees—often paid directly to a professor by those registering for his class. Nonpayment was a problem. One professor ended his lecture course by saying: “Next year I expect to give ordinary lectures well and lawfully as I always have, but no extraordinary lectures, for students are not good payers, wishing to learn but not to pay, as the saying is: All desire to know but none to pay the price. I have nothing more to say to you beyond dismissing you with God’s blessing and begging you to attend mass.”
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Scholastics and the Copernican “Revolution”

Just as there were no “Dark Ages,” there was no “Scientific Revolution.” Rather, the notion of a Scientific Revolution was invented to discredit the
medieval Church by claiming that science burst forth in full bloom (thus owing no debts to prior Scholastic scholars) only when a weakened Christianity no longer could suppress it. But, as will be seen in chapter 13, the great scientific achievements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were produced by a group of scholars notable for their piety, who were based in Christian universities, and whose brilliant achievements built on an invaluable legacy of centuries of Scholastic scholarship.
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The start of the so-called Scientific Revolution is usually attributed to Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). According to the fashionable account, Copernicus was an obscure Catholic canon in far-off Poland, an isolated genius who somehow discovered that, contrary to what everyone believed, the earth revolves around the sun. Moreover, the story goes, the Church made unrelenting efforts to suppress this view.

There is far more fiction than fact in this account. Rather than being some obscure Pole, Copernicus received a superb education at the best Italian universities of the time: Bologna, Padua, and Ferrara. The idea that the earth circles the sun did not come to him out of the blue; he learned the fundamentals leading to the heliocentric model of the solar system from his Scholastic professors. What Copernicus added was not a leap but the implicit next step in a long line of discovery stretching back centuries.

Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1175–1253)

A Norman raised in England, Robert Grosseteste attended Oxford, studied and taught at the University of Paris from 1208 to 1213, returned to become chancellor of Oxford, and then became Bishop of Lincoln, the largest diocese in England, which included Oxford. Grosseteste was a remarkable polymath who made important contributions to optics, physics, and tides. He refuted Aristotle’s theory of the rainbow—Grosseteste being the first to realize that rainbows involve refracted light.
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He also pursued astronomy, being careful to distinguish it from astrology, as many of his contemporaries did not.

But perhaps his most important contributions involved what has come to be called the scientific method. One of these contributions was what he called the principle of “resolution and composition”—which involved reasoning from the particular case to the general and then back again. For example, by looking at a particular case, one can formulate a universal law about nature and then apply this law to make predictions about all
the other relevant cases—such as by formulating a law about eclipses of the moon and then testing that law by applying it to eclipses of the sun.

Note the emphasis on observation as the basis of all science. Grosseteste’s commitment to empiricism was such that he introduced the notion of the controlled scientific experiment to Western thought. The fundamental principle is that, as one historian of science summarized, “when one controls his observations by eliminating any other possible cause of the effect, he may arrive at an experimental universal of provisional truth.”
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John of Sacrobosco (1195–1256)

His real name may have been John of Holywood; he probably was either English or Irish, he may have attended Oxford; but he most certainly served on the faculty of the University of Paris, beginning in 1221. Although little is known about Sacrobosco, he wrote two influential books, both of which survive. The first was
Algorismus
, which introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and new methods of numerical calculation for the first time to the European universities. His second,
Tractatus de Sphaera
(usually referred to as
Sphere
), was a readable astronomy textbook based on Ptolemy’s cosmology. The title reflects the claim that the earth and all the heavenly bodies are spherical.
Sphere
was required reading for European university students for the next several centuries, often praised for its clarity.
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Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280)

The son of the Count of Bollstädt in Bavaria, Albertus was educated in Italy at the University of Padua, and then he taught at a number of German universities before taking the position of master of theology at the University of Paris (where Thomas Aquinas was his dedicated student). In 1248 Albertus returned to Germany and in 1260 he was appointed Bishop of Regensburg. He resigned after three years to return to his scholarship. Author of thirty-eight books, he was so celebrated during his lifetime that his colleagues, including Roger Bacon, added the title “Magnus” (the great) to his name. He was regarded as one of the theological giants of medieval times, but he also put to empirical testing claims that Aristotle and other classical Greek philosophers had made about nature. In doing so he became “perhaps the best field botanist of the entire Middle Ages,” according to historian of science David Lindberg.
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Committed to observation and experimentation, Albertus made significant contributions in many other fields, including geography, astronomy, and chemistry—hence his colleagues gave him the title
Doctor Universalis
. Perhaps most important, he inspired his colleagues and students not merely to accept classical scholarship but to challenge the received wisdom and seek reliable observations.
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Roger Bacon (ca. 1214–1294)

This brilliant Englishman is often identified as “the first scientist” in that he fully embraced Grosseteste’s commitment to the experimental method and expanded on it at length. Born in Somerset, he entered Oxford at thirteen and eventually became a master there, lecturing on Aristotle. Moving on to the University of Paris in about 1240, he spent a few years on the faculty but then joined the Franciscan Order and ceased teaching, devoting his time to writing.

Initially, Bacon’s Franciscan superiors prevented him from publishing, but Pope Clement IV ordered Bacon to write for him. Bacon responded by sending the pope his
Opus Majus
. It is an amazing work. Written in only a year of frantic effort, the available modern edition runs to 1,996 pages. In it, Bacon displayed knowledge of many different fields: mathematics; the size and position of heavenly bodies; the physiology of eyesight; optics, including refraction, mirrors and lenses, the magnifying glass, and spectacles; an accurate recipe for gunpowder; calendar reform; and on and on—“a veritable library covering all aspects of natural science,” in the words of biographer Brian Clegg.
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Bacon also stressed empiricism as opposed to authority. He declared: “Authority has no savor, unless reason for it is given, and it does not give understanding, but belief. For we believe on the strength of authority, but we do not understand through it. Nor can we distinguish between sophism and demonstration, unless we know to test the conclusion by works.”
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As illustration, Bacon noted that some had argued (wrongly) that Aristotle claimed hot water freezes faster than does cold water. This was not a matter to be accepted on Aristotle’s authority or by consulting other learned persons, Bacon said. Instead, one must take a container of hot water and one of cold, put them outside in cold weather, and see which freezes first.

Bacon’s general discussion of the experiment rested on the work of his predecessor Robert Grosseteste. Putting theories to further tests and
making appropriate observations—this is what both Grosseteste and Bacon, and probably most Scholastic scientists, meant by the experimental method. That approach represented an extraordinary departure from the Greeks as well as from early Christian thinkers, who believed in the superiority of ideas and abstract forms to empirical reality. To the Scholastics’ predecessors, reason, not observation, was the true test of any philosophical claim. This was a powerful tradition that proponents of experimentalism had to overcome. Only because Bacon, Grosseteste, and other Scholastics fought and won the battle for empiricism was it possible for the rise of science to occur.

Finally,
Opus Majus
was filled with remarkable predictions about future inventions, including microscopes, telescopes, and flying machines. The Oxford historian John Henry Bridges noted that Bacon’s “scientific imagination” made these forecasts possible. But “what may [best] be said,” Bridges added, “is that he set the world on the right track towards their discovery”—namely, by outlining a method that called for “experiment and observation combined with mathematics, when mathematics were available, and when they were not available, then experiment and observation pursued alone.”
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Campanus of Novara (1220–1296)

Born in Lombardy, Giovanni Compano (Campanus is the Latinized version of his name) served as chaplain to four successive popes. Meanwhile he earned a reputation as a mathematician—Roger Bacon considered him one of the world’s greatest mathematicians. But Campanus’s greatest contributions came as a sophisticated translator and commentator on two extraordinary works of knowledge. First was his translation of Euclid’s
Elements
, wherein the great ancient Greek mathematician presented his complete work of geometry. Campanus’s translation became the standard textbook in European medieval universities. And, of course, geometry was the essential tool for study of the cosmos. To this, Campanus added a second invaluable translation: Ptolemy’s second-century treatise on planetary theory, the
Almagest
. Although Ptolemy had the earth at the center of the solar system with everything else in orbit around it, the geometry of his system was so well constructed that calculations based on it yielded accurate predictions of future states and allowed accurate calculations of the dates for Easter and of eclipses. It was very important that Campanus gave Scholastic scholars access to Ptolemy’s complete work because it
revealed how complicated it was to have everything in orbit around the earth.
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Theodoric of Freiberg (1250–1310)

A German who studied at the University of Paris and later returned as a member of the faculty, Theodoric formulated the first geometrical analysis of the rainbow and backed it up with solid experimental findings, leading to what has been called “the most dramatic development of 14th and 15th century optics.”
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Theodoric was the first to realize that rainbows are caused not by either refraction or reflection but by
both within a single raindrop
. Using spherical flasks and glass globes filled with water, he was able to create rainbow effects in his laboratory.
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Theodoric’s use of a specially constructed experimental apparatus was widely admired and copied by Scholastic natural philosophers.

Thomas Bradwardine (1290–1349)

Thomas Bradwardine was an Englishman educated at Oxford who then stayed on as a professor in Merton College and eventually became chancellor of the university. He left Oxford to serve as confessor to Edward III at the Battle of Crécy (August 26, 1346), and in 1349 he was elected Archbishop of Canterbury. Forty days later Bradwardine died of the Black Death.

Bradwardine was the leading member of the group known as the Oxford Calculators, pioneers in formulating and quantifying theorems in kinetics and dynamics—they were the first to formulate the mean speed theorem. As the prominent American mathematician Clifford Truesdell explained:

The now published sources prove to us, beyond contention, that the main kinematical properties of uniformly accelerated motions, still attributed to Galileo by the physics texts, were discovered and proved by scholars at Merton college.… In principle, the qualities of Greek physics were replaced, at least for motions, by the numerical quantities that have ruled Western science ever since. The work was quickly diffused into France, Italy, and other parts of Europe. Almost immediately, Giovanni di Casale and Nicole Oresme found how to represent the results on geometrical graphs, introducing the connection between geometry and
the physical world that became a second characteristic habit of Western thought.
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William of Ockham (ca. 1285–1349)

Another Englishman who studied at Oxford, William of Ockham joined the Franciscans and then spent his academic career on the Continent. He was constantly in trouble with the pope while enjoying the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis IV of Bavaria. Like Bradwardine, Ockham died during the outbreak of the Black Death, but it is unknown whether that was the cause of his death.