file 2 - Book notes: A Short History of
Scientific Ideas by Charles Singer.
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This is a continuation of handwritten notes begun May 2022.
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IV - The Failure of Inspiration
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P.103 "under Stoicism we get either a type of exact but intellectually
motiveless observation, or a rejection of all knowledge not of practical
importance."
p.106 "VARO (116-27 B.C.) wrote and encyclopedia of the sciences... he
distinguished nine such disciplines, namely grammar, dialectic, rhetoric,
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, and architecture. Of these
the last two were not recognised by the later Latin writers..." I pause to
consider that each of these 'disciplines' mean to me; one might not
immediately consider medicine to be important per-se, if not on regular
medication, or in that profession, but when employing the term more widely,
such as under considerations of ones own Wellbeing, which I think is of
great importance to conisder and employ daily, the discipline is vital.
"Astronomy" again. Who thinks about this daily unless of that interest? But
perhaps we should be regularly, like that of a religion, imploy our minds to
the bigger questions of where we are from, is there life out there, and, how
does the universe work? Working our minds in this way can help put into
perspective the many trivialities and the mudane we become obsessed with.
p.107 PLINY (A.D. 23-79) produced 'Natural History'. It was drawn from about
2,000 work - most of them now lost...Its erudite, travelled, and industrious
author exhibits an interest in natural phenomena that is quite uncontrolled
by scientific or critical standards. The main thought that runs through the
book is that nature serves man. All things have their 'uses'..." although
not only for exploitation as one might suppose (and can be seen done
throughout the ages and by others) but as a source of admiration, and
inspiration. However "This world of wonder is... effectively without a God
and works by rule... Medical plants are treated [in this work] in greatest
detail, and he holds that all plants have their own special medical powers."
p.108 SENECA (3 B.C.-A.D. 65) wrote 'Natural Questions'. "It deals chiefly
with astronomy, meteorology, and physical geography."
p.111 "[Strabo (born c. 63 B.C.) rejects Thule, and disbelieves in any
habitable land as far north as the Arctic Circle. Ireland, the most
northerly of known territories, is 'barely habitable on account of the
cold'. Southward, he considers the habitable world extends about 3,000
stadia beyond Meroe."
p.112 A survey superintended by the son-in-law of Augustus, VIPSANIUS
AGRIPPA (died 12 B.C.) "was rendered possible by the fact that the Empire
was well furnished with roads, marked with milestones. [The map of which
having indications for the marching of armies.]
p.113 "under Agricola [pronounced Ag-rick-alla], the Roman fleet rounded
Britain and proved it to be an island, discovering at the same time the
Orcades (Orkney Islands) and coming in sight of 'Thule' (? Shetlands). Yet
Tacitus, like Caesar and the elder Pliny, believes that Spain lies to the
west of Britain. Like Strabo he described the Pyrenees as running north and
south. He goes on to explain the phenomenon of the Midnight Sun - which he
brings as far south as the north of Scotland - by telling us that 'the flat
extremities of the Earth, casting a low shadow, do not throw the darkness up
high, and the night does not reach to the sky and stars'. The statement
impliies the view that the earth is a disk with flattened edges. This from a
Roman gentleman who had access to the ideas of Aristotle, Hipparchus,
Archimedes, and Aratothenes..."
p.114 "The original native medical system was that of a people of the lower
culture and devoid of scientific ideas. Interwoven with ideas that trespass
on the domain of religion, it possessed that multitude of 'specialist
deities' characteristic of the Roman cults. Thus Fever had three tembles in
Rome, and was supplicated as the goddess <i>Febris</i> and flatteringly
addressed as 'Divine Fever', 'Holy Fever', 'Great Goddess Fever'...
"The entire external aspect of Roman medicine was gradually transformed by
the advent of Greek science [although] the change hardly penetrated below
the upper classes. [Sometimes I wonder if this is a front; such as royal
familites or key players in the world secretly still employing such things
as astrology in a serious manner.] "Thus many references in <i>City of God</i>
by St. Augustus (354-430) show the ancient beliefs still current in the
Italy of his day, After the fall of the Empire, they lingered among the
barbaric peoples..." [This could also be suggested regarding such things
that are outlawed amongst the masses by the elite, whilst they themselves
still practice/believe in them. This can be especially considered when one
wonders why is becomes such a both, say, to the church if someone believes
in magic; if it's "not real" then why the concern?]
An interesting point about the Hippocratic Oath: "I will reckon him who
taught me this Art as dear to me as those who bore me. I will look upon his
offspring as my own brethren and will teach them this Art, if they would
learn it, [u]without fee or stipulation[/u]... I will impart a knowledge of
this art to my own sons, and to those of my teacher, and to disciples bound
by a stipulation and an oath, according to the Law of Medicine, [u]but to
none other[/u]." [my emphasis]. Talk about 'keeping it in the family'. That
modern day medicine is accessible to all, especially her in the UK with our
NHS, this oath seem to be referring to some other art... or perhaps it is!
What if 'the medicine' we mere mortals of the lower class is not the thing
those elites have access to, or are privy to. It's akin to a secret society.
p.115 ASCLEPIADES of Bithynia (died c.40 B.C.) "influenced deeply later
medical thought, ridiculed, and perhaps we should add misunderstood, the
Hippocratic attitude of relying on... 'the healing power of nature', which
he regarded as a mere 'meditation on death;, and urged that active measures
were needed for the press of cure."
p.115 cont. The "Roman medical curriculum [lacked] any practical study of
anatomy [which, when we consider their] indifference to human life...
considering their brutality to slaves... [and] the value - obvious to us -
of anatomical knowledge for surgical practice [particularly] the
organization of the military medical service of the Empire, it is highly
significant that the knowledge of antiquity was thus allowed [as it was] to
lapse." [It seems pecuiliar to me how our modern-day medical industry
appears to exist to prolong the lifes of individuals, people who, seemingly
in the grand scheme of things are "nothing". Why does the system care? I
suggest perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it's all a front, because I find it odd
that that individuals fight to save the lives of others, when, for example,
another creature is left dead at the side of the road after it has been
struck by a vehicle. Why are we so important?
p.117 The use of the mosquito net was ridiculed as effeminate by [some]
poets...
note 1: "There are scientific experiences in which the mind comes to rest
with conviction, even when not repeated. [I believe this could be observed a
lot with "Science & Covid" - revealing that sceintists are human and not
only make mistakes, but, no matter how rational they believe they are or
protray themselves as, or come across as, they have their biases like the
rest of us.] Thus an astronomical prediction, involving exact and detailed
calculation, if confirmed in an exact and detailed way, may carry conviction
as to the soundness of its principle even though verified by but a single
observation." [In the case of Covid, blanket approaches were employed, even
when not relevant to an individual or potentially causing them more harm (in
other ways) or at risk of other issues more serious to them.]
p.119 "Among the Greeks private surgeries were well known. Larger
institutions were connected with the temples to Aesculapius, the god of
healing, but there is no evidence of scientific medical treatment in these
places. [It seems to me that addressing ones' god in a faithful manner,
regarting an ailment or medical issue, can provide the body with the ability
to heal - perhaps not "from the gods" but through what we can term the
placebo effect. Even if medical treatment is employed, one is better off if
they believe it is helping; conversely if you have your doubts (or a
pesimist in general), you're at risk of being worse off.]
p.121 "...the true abacus... began as a board with a series of grooves in
which pebbles or calculi would be moved up and down, hence the verb calculo
and the modern use of 'calculate'. In its more developed form the abacus
consisted of an upper row of short rods and a longer row of long rods..."
p.122 "It is interestning to note that Boethius divides mathematics into
four sections, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy, and that he is
the first to describe these fout disciplines as the quadruvium ('four
pathways').
The Romans helf that the art of surveying was at least as old as their city,
and had been practiced from the first by the priests."
p.125 "Januarius was named from the god Janus, and Februarius, the last
month, was the season of ritual purification (februare, 'to purify' or
'expiate')."
p.127 "From the fact that the longest day in Alexandria was 14 hours, in
Italy 15, and in Britain 17, Pliny deduces that lands close to the Pole must
have a 24-hours' day in the summer and a 24-hours' night in winter. [COPY
PARAGRAPH]
p.128 [COPY passages regarding Astrology.]
p.129 "With the spread of Christianity and disa[[earance of the Stoic
philosophy, astrology passed into the background, to return with the Arabian
revival and the rise of the universities in the thirteenth century..."
p.130 "After death, so Pliny would have us believe, man is as he was before
he was born - and this he tell us as he plunges into his magic-ridden
pages!"
p.132 [COPY PARAGRAPH]
p.133 "Broadly speaking, the Neoplatonist would have said that the universe
had been made for Man who is the essential reality; the Stoic that Man had
been made for the universe. The Neoplatonic view was victorious."
p.134 "[The Platonic] Idea is in the end identifiable with form. Matter
destitute of form or idea, is evil; with form it is at best neutral. It must
be the soul's aspiration to free itself from such dangers. Then and only
then can it hope for ecstatic union with the Divine."
"Christianity with its spread absorbed, with the masses, some of their
superstitions, their magic, their theurgy."
Chapter V - The Failure of Knowledge
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p.137 [COPY PARA]
p. 139 "By the sixth and seventh centuries the Church had come to some sort
of terms with astrology... St. Isidor regards astrology as, in part at
least, a legitimate science. He distinguishes, however, between natural and
superstitious astrology. The latter is 'the science practiced by the
mathematici who read prophecies in the heavens, and place the twelve
constellations (of the Zodiac) as rulers over members of man's body and
soul, and predict the nativities and dispositions of men by the courses of
the stars.' Neverthe less, St. Isidore accepts many of the conclusions of
astrology. He advises physicians to study it, and he ascribed to the moon an
influence over plant and animal life and control over the humours of man,
while he accepts without question the influence of the Dog Star and of the
comets." [Dog Days]
p.141 "The rise of the Abbasid Caliphs (from 750) inaugurated the epoch of
greatest power, spendour, and prosperity of Islamic rule, but Islamic
thought was still in the absorptive period."
p.143 "It was at Bagdad that most of the Aristotelian writings were first
made accessible in Arabic, together with works on botany, mineralogy, and
merchanics, as well as many Greek alchemical works... It seems likely that
many alchemical methods were of Persian and some perhaps of Chinese
origin..."
p.144 "It is a misfortune that at Alexandra, where alchemy specially
flourished, mystical tendencies, largely of Neoplatonic origin, overlaid the
experimental factor and thus tended to superstitious practice, passing into
fraud.
Jabir (c. 760-c. 815) is the earliest alchemical writer in Arabic of whom we
hear... [He] came from SOuth Arabia, belonged to the mystical brotherhood of
the Sufis whose doctrines influenced the famous sect of the Assassins,
became a friend of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) of The
Thousand and One Nights... Recent scholarship has begun to distinguish a
very few works of Jabir from many picturesque fables and a huge mass of
occult works bearing his name.
Jabir had probably some knowledge of Greek and was well placed for obtaining
alchemical information from the shrinking Bysantine Empire. He had a
Pythagorean belief in numbers as real things and attached significance to
the well-known magic square of the nine digits, which has been a source of
wonder for centuries. [9 digits; any [row or] column adds to 15.]
[Jabir] believed that numbers correspond to qualities or things and have
specific relation to letters, to substances, and to the powers that change
them all." [Author calls this "chaos of fruitless ideas] but suggests that
"through errors often aid in tracing scientific and technical influences and
stimulate further inquiry." and as far as alchemical works such as Jabir's
[i.e. Book of Properties] contain genuine chemical knowledge."
p.147 Crude sodium carbonate occurs native in Egypt. Potashes = kali or
al-kali (Arabic - calcinated wood ashes), the source of both our word
alkali.
p.159 "Astrolabe... [have] remained popular and [are] still in use for
determining times of rituals."
p.150 "The astrolabe was relatively seldom used for actual observation but
mainly for calculation and doubtless often to impress the clients of
astrologers. Nevertheless, it was the most complex astronomical device
available as a means of avoising tedious routine calcluations of spherical
trigonometry such as always occur in astronomical and astrological work."
p.154 "In the twelfth century a great change came over Islamic thought.
Under the influence of the religious teacher Al-Ghazzali (d. 1111),
tolerance gave place to persecution of studies thought to 'lead to loss of
belief in the Creator and the origin of the world'. Outstanding and
independent works become rarer. Among the scientific writers an increasing
proportion of Jews is to be observed, because they were relatively free from
such restraints..."
p.155 "[MAIMONIDES' (1135-1204)] cosmological views influenced St. Thomas
Aquinas, and through him, the whole thought of Catholic Europe."
p.156-7 [COPY section about Occident science and learning.]
p.159 "Before about 1200 Moslem learning was better organized, more
original, more vital that Byzantine."
p.161 [COPY Arabic star names and other terms that have passed into common
language.]
p.162 "ROBERT OF CHESTER (c. 1110- c. 1160)... was the first to translate
the Koran (1143). Among his scientific renderings was the first alchemical
text to appear in Latin (1144)... a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise which
greatly influenced Roger Bacon, as well as various astronomical and
astrological works."
p.164 "[MICHAEL THE SCOTT's (c. 1175-c. 1235)] version of Alpetragius
contained the first attack ontraditional astronomy... His version of
Aristotelian biology from the Arabic gave Arisotle's own scientific
observations for the first time to the West. His work on astrology was the
first major treatise on the subject accessible in Latin. [He] had Jewish and
Moslem help and was long associate with that arch-enemy of the papacy,
Frederick II. Thus in the popular imagination his name became associated
with black magic. This was the fate of other translators from the Arabic..."
[COPY POEM]
p.165 "Aristotle conceived the stars as beings whose nature and substance
were purer and nobler than that of aught in the spheres below. This was a
point of departure from which the influence of the heavenly bodies over
human destines might be developed... The fixed stars, moving regularily in a
circle, controlled the ordered course of nature, the events that proceeded
in recurring, manifest, and unalterable rounds, such as winter and summer,
night and day, growth and decay. The planets, on the other hand, erratic or
at least errant in their movements, governed the more variable and less
easily ascertainable events in the world around and within us..."
p.167 [COPY mystical writers and the reading into things of spiritual
meaning.]
p.169 [COPY PARA "Men seek out the hidden powers of nature..."]
p.170 "ALBERTUS MAGNUS (1206-80)... was among the very few medieval writers
who were real observers of nature."
p.173 "[ARNALD OF VILLANOVA (c. 1240-1311)] was not only the earliest modern
exponent of the Hippocratic method of observing and carefully recording
actual cases of disease, but he also influenced alchemy. That study was
effectively of Arabic origin so far as the Western world is concerned... It
begins in 1144 with the translation into Latin by Rober of Chester... of an
alchemical work ostensibly by MORIENUS ROMANUS, supposedly a contemporary
Christian of Jerusalem who derived it from an earlier Arabic source. Like
other medieval studies, alchemy became linked with astrology. Thus the
'seven metals' were each controlled or influenced by one of the 'seven
planets' much in the same was as were the organs of the human body... [Arnald]
had direct access to both Arabic and Hebrew and had personal relations with
both Moslems and Jews.
...
Astronomy - which cannot at this stage be distinguished from astrology - was
certainly the main scientific interest of the scholastic age. The practical
results of scholastic astronomical activity are, however, pitifully meagre.
Western knowledge of astronomy was largely based on the activity of King
ALFONSO THE WISE (1223-84) of Castile. He collected at Toledo a considerable
body of scholars, mostly Jews, who calculated a set of astronomical tables
(1252). The Alfonsine tables were spread rapidly through Europe..."
p.175 [There is a] common misunderstanding that in the Middle Ages men
believed that the earth was flat..."
p.185 "Alchemy presents a difficulty in a history of science. The word has
come to suggest magic, obscurantism, futile symbolis, and fraud. Most of
this is just, but the words alchemy and chemistry are from the same root,
whose separate meanings were not clarified till the Middle Ages had closed.
Many alchemical works have scientific elements. Moreover the alchemists
contrubuted certain processes and apparatus. They claimed to use twelve
processes: Calcination, Congelation, Fixation, Solution, Digestion,
Distillation, Sublimation, Separation, Ceration, Fermentation,
Multiplication, and Projections. All these are easily intelligible, except
perhaps the last [which] is presentation of gold in the last stage of the
process."
p.187 "We think now of technology as a product of scientific knowledge and
the press treats it as science itself. Perhaps the two may now be
inseperable. Historically, however, systematic observation and experiment
were made possible by technology..."
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VI - REVIVAL OF LEARNING
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p.189 "It was... the men of science, adherents of the new 'Experimental
Way', who swept away the whole medieval approach... Their triumph was not
fully apparent till the eighteenth century. There are backward centres where
it is not complete even now."
...
PETER OF ABANO (1250-1381)... earned a repuataion as a magician. [His]
best-known work... the Concilator."
p.199 "Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, more
compendiously known as PARACELSUS (1493-1541)... was a person of violent,
boastful, and repellent temper, whose iconoclasm, garrulous and often
incoherent though it was, probably did something to deter men from the
worship of the old idols. His symbolic act of burning the works both of the
Greek Galen and of the Arab Avicenna, as an introduction to [a] lecture
course, was meant to typify the position of the independent, investigator."
'Nature' included for him the influence of the stars upon the lives of men
and many other relationships then generally credited and now universally
discredited."
p.212 "The Pole, NICOLAS COPERNICUS (1473-1543)... was a student rather than
an observer, and he continued to attend university courses until over thirty
years of age... He [gave] attention to classics, mathematics, astronomy,
medicine, law, and theology. It was in Italy that he first discussed the
Pythadorean theory with which his name has become associated. [He] is said
to have had skill in painting which suggests that type of visualizing
imagination frequently associated with scientific power. He was not at all
active as a practical astronomy. He had, it is true, taken a few
observations of eclipses and oppositions of planets, but for the most part
his results were obtained in the study... [He] was induced to seek a new
theory of the heavenly bodies by finding that mathematicians differed among
themselves on this subject. He had considered the various motions of the
heavenly bodies according to the old system, and concluded that some
essential factor had been missed. He found his hint in the traditions that
had survived of the thought of Philolaus the Pythagorian and of Aristarchus.
p.214 ...[He] reduced the number of circles demanded to explain celestial
movements [but] still invoked no less than thirty-four.
"Religion was the main interest of the day... [which] is, by its nature,
conservative, and any scientific advance of the first magnitude disturbs
those who profess it... [COPY]
p.215 "...astrology was based on the doctrine that the outer spheres of the
universe influenced the innter. [COPY] ...Remove the earth from her central
position among the spheres and the whole astrological system becomes
unworkable."
VII - THE INSURGENT CENTURY (1600-1700)
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p.218 "In 1583 there came to London GIORDANO BRUNO (1547-1600)... a renegade
monk... his restless and turbulent spirit had combined with an aloofness
from the affairs of men to make him unwelcome. Throughout his life he showed
a lofty indifference to common sense that cannot fail to command our resepct
- at a distance. He made a precarious livlihood by lecturing on a barren
logical system which he had partly invented..."
p.219
End of file 2 - Last updated: 08/06/22