Ancient and Mediaeval Science 35 



em science; together with other academies estabhshed on similar pat- 

 terns, they remained until the end of the eighteenth century the main 

 agencies of scientific progress; it is impossible to exaggerate their im- 

 portance. 



Yet we should remember two things. First these seventeenth cen- 

 tury academicians could not have done what they did but for the long 

 mediaeval gestation. They themselves did not realize that and some of 

 the early academicians were tempted to believe that they were directly 

 continuing the traditions not of the Middle Ages but of Greek antiquity. 

 Their illusion is now exposed without the possibility of doubt. When- 

 ever one investigates carefully the origins of "modern" thought, even in 

 the minds of its most original forerunners (say, Leonardo da Vinci, 

 Galileo, Descartes, Newton) one finds an abundance of mediaeval 

 roots. The seventeenth century men of science were standing upon the 

 shoulders of mediaeval giants; irrespective of their own sizes they were 

 that much taller. 



In the second place, while it is obvious that our scientists have fully 

 understood and exploited the experimental method, this is not true of 

 the great majority of modern men who persist in preferring irrational 

 methods to rational ones (e.g., in the treatment of political and social 

 problems), or else who attach more importance to a priori reasoning 

 than to the a posteriori reasoning which is the very essence of the experi- 

 mental spirit. This point deserves elaboration by means of an example. 



The discovery of the sexuality of higher plants by Camerarius in 

 1694 could have been made two thousand years earlier, if the experimen- 

 tal method had been applied to it.^^ It was retarded by non-experimen- 

 tal thinking and by prejudices, and after its publication it was rejected and 

 its general acceptance was delayed for half a century because of the 

 same prejudices. Similar remarks could be offered with regard to almost 

 every fundamental discovery of modern science down to the theory of 

 evolution ( 1859 ) . Each discovery was delayed by a kind of intellectual 

 inertia, and when it was finally made, its acceptance was delayed by the 

 same inertia, the refusal to experiment ( or even to observe ) and to abide 

 by the experimental results. 



The experimental method is now explained in philosophical courses 

 (one might even say, it is explained nowhere else, for the teachers of 

 science are satisfied to show it in action), but there are many philoso- 

 phers, even among the greatest, who have never understood it. More- 

 over, its beneficial value is often minimized and even obliterated by the 

 abuse of purely dialectical methods. Scholasticism ( or the abuse of dia- 

 lectics ) is not by any means a mediaeval disease, nor is it a Latin one, 

 as is too readily asserted by people who can think only of Catholic scho- 

 lasticism, Thomism or neo-Thomism. That is one species of scholasti- 

 cism, but there are many others and the genus is scattered all over the 

 world. Scholasticism is a mental disease which can be diagnosed in 

 Hindu and Chinese minds, as well as in Latin, Greek, Arabic, or He- 



ss, 



'G. Sarton: The artificial fertilization of date-palms in the time of Ashur- 

 NAsiR-PAL 885-60 B.C. (Isis, 21, 8-13, 4 pi., 1934). 



