Ancient and Mediaeval Science 37 



ideas, and not according to crude concepts, which, because they were 

 derived from experience only, have marred all good intentions." ^° 



Another German philosopher, Hegel, who was a dictator of European 

 ( and American ) thought for a good part of the nineteenth century, be- 

 gan his career in a manner which was prophetic of his own unwisdom. 

 His Dissertatio philosophica de orbitis planetarum ( 1801 ) was a "philo- 

 sophical" attack on Newtonian astronomy. Hegel "proved" that there 

 could not be more than seven planets.^^ That remarkable thesis was 

 published soon after the discovery of Ceres by Giuseppe Piazzi! ^- 



Hegelian doctrine and method influenced deeply such men as Karl 

 Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95) and some of Hegel's 

 poison penetrated their own philosophy, the dialectical materialism and 

 historical materialism, which in its turn is influencing many men and 

 women of our own times."^^ 



This shows that there is always a strong tendency, due no doubt to 

 the intrinsic qualities of the human mind, to add dialectics, enough or 

 too much, in season or out of season, to experience, a perverse desire to 

 transcend experience. Even the greatest men of science are not immune 

 from that weakness, witness one of the best known of our own contem- 

 poraries — you have already named him in your own minds — the late 

 Arthur Stanley Eddington. During the last period of his life ( 1921- 

 44 ) , Eddington developed the astounding doctrine that the structure of 

 the universe can be established on an a priori basis because of the struc- 

 ture of our own mind.'*^ It is true that the agreement between the value 



*° Critique of pure reason. Transcendental dialectic, Book I, section 1, p, 275 in 

 Max MiJLLER's translation (London 1881). 



" The duke Ernest of Saxony-Gotha sent a copy of Hegel's thesis to the 

 astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach with the inscription "Monumentum insaniae 

 saecuh decimi noni" (Rudolf Wolf: Geschichte der Astronomic, p. 685, Miinchen 

 1877). In 1801, Hegel was no longer a child, he was 31 years old. The text of 

 his Dissertatio "pro licentia docendi" may be found in his Samtliche Werke, 

 Glockner's edition (vol. 1, 3-29, 1927). 



^ Piazzi observed Ceres for the first time on the first evening of the nine- 

 teenth century, Jan. 1, 1801; the news reached Bode in Berlin only on March 20, but 

 created at once a commotion among astronomers. Hegel defended his thesis in 

 Jena, on August 27, 1801. 



** For good illustrations of that sinister influence on men of science, to wit, 

 botanists, see Trofim Denisovich LyseNko: Heredity and its variabihty (65 p., 

 New York 1946; Isis 37, 108); P. S. Hudson and R. H. Richens: The new genetics 

 in the Soviet Union (88 p., Cambridge 1946; Isis 37, 106-8); Conway Zirkle: The 

 death of a science in Russia (334 p., Philadelphia 1949; Isis 41, 238-39). Julian 

 Huxley: Heredity, East and West (256 p., New York 1949; Isis 41, 239). The 

 words "dialectical materialism" are used so frequently behind the Iron Curtain, that 

 it has been necessary there to coin the abbreviation "diamat." 



^ Sir Arthur summarized his views as follows: "An intelligence, unacquainted 

 with our universe, but acquainted with the system of thought by which the human 

 mind interprets to itself the content of its sensory experience, should be able to 

 attain all the knowledge of physics that we have attained by experiment. He 

 would not deduce the particular events and objects of our experience, but he 

 would deduce the generalizations we have based on them. For example, he would 

 infer the existence and properties of radium, but not the dimensions of the 

 Earth." (Nature, 154, 759, 1944). 



