MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE ELEV- 



ENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES: 



THE PROBLEM OF ELEMENTS 



THE cultivation of the liberal arts and the sciences during 

 the twelfth century developed new methods and inves- 

 tigated new subject-matters. What was achieved in 

 theory and interpretation is obscured by the further trans- 

 formation of problems and enlargement of data during the 

 succeeding period, the hundred years between the middle of 

 the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth centuries, when 

 the scientific and philosophical works of Aristotle and a vast 

 body of accompanying commentary, elaboration, and specu- 

 lation were translated for the first time. The problem of uni- 

 versals and the problem of elements are two highly ambiguous 

 signs of the intellectual activity of a period of distinguished 

 cultural and scientific renaissance. 



The grammarian, rhetorician, and dialectician of the early 

 twelfth century studied texts that had long been available 

 more constructively and imaginatively — Latin grammars and 

 rhetorics, translations of Aristotle's Categories and On Inter- 

 pretation, Porphyry's Introduction, and Boethius' logical trea- 

 tises and commentaries — and the twelfth century Book of Six 

 Principles attributed to Gilbert de la Porree was assimilated 

 with Porphyry's Introduction to the canon of Aristotle's Or- 

 ganon. Even the problem of universals was familiar in the 

 widely known three questions of Porphyry, After the trans- 

 lation of the last four books of Aristotle's Org anon the work of 

 twelfth century logicians like Abailard had little pertinence 

 to the continuing problems; and, in general, the liberal arts 

 of the trivium were turned from interpretative applications 

 and constructive theories to demonstrative and speculative 

 systematizations. 



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