216 Britain's Heritage of Science 



CHAPTER VIII 

 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



npHROUGHOUT the Middle Ages natural science was a 

 -I- study of the written word of ancient writers, whose 

 authority went unquestioned. Processes of observation or 

 experiment were barely known. To this mediaeval tradition 

 the age of the Tudors, in its attitude to scientific study, was 

 to a large extent loyal. Authority was still final and definite. 

 What Galen and Hippocrates, Aristotle and Pliny had written 

 was subject-matter for dispute, for discussion, for argument, 

 but not for direct investigation. In the same way the new 

 light derived from the Arabs, which spread through the 

 learned world at the latter end of the twelfth and at the 

 beginning of the thirteenth centuries, was treated as a 

 matter for dialectics by those who set the written word 

 before actual observation or experiment in Nature. 



Let us consider the books in English at the disposal of 

 an average man in the latter half of the sixteenth century. 

 Through mediaeval times had drifted a certain " corpus " 

 of moralized natural history known as the " Physiologus," 

 which was in essence a Bestiarium. It took various forms, 

 and was read throughout Europe and the Near East. This 

 " Physiologus " was primarily religious in its aim, but dealt 

 not only with the animals mentioned in the Bible but with 

 other and often mythical monsters. Scientifically the 

 zoology of the " Physiologus " was of the poorest; in fact, 

 the study of zoology was at its worst during the Middle 

 Ages; it had fallen far lower than in classical days. The 

 " Physiologus " had its origin in Alexandria in early Christian 

 times, and was translated into many tongues, including 

 Coptic. It was sometimes fathered upon Ambrose, but is 

 older than his day. 



During the eleventh century a certain " Episcopus 



