MEDI/EVAL SCIENCE IN THE WEST 



learning thus brought about had its first permanent in- 

 fluence in the fields of literature and art, but its effect 

 on science could not be long delayed. Quite inde- 

 pendently of the Byzantine influence, however, the 

 striving for better intellectual things had manifested 

 itself in many ways before the close of the thir- 

 teenth century. An illustration of this is found in 

 the almost simultaneous development of centres of 

 teaching, which developed into the universities of 

 Italy, France, England, and, a little later, of Ger- 

 many. 



The regular list of studies that came to be adopted 

 everywhere comprised seven nominal branches, divided 

 into two groups the so-called quadrivium, com- 

 prising music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; 

 and the trivium comprising grammar, rhetoric, and 

 logic. The vagueness of implication of some of these 

 branches gave opportunity to the teacher for the 

 promulgation of almost any knowledge of which he 

 might be possessed, but there can be no doubt that, in 

 general, science had but meagre share in the cur- 

 riculum. In so far as it was given representation, its 

 chief field must have been Ptolemaic astronomy. The 

 utter lack of scientific thought and scientific method is 

 illustrated most vividly in the works of the greatest 

 men of that period such men as Albertus Magnus, 

 Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the hosts of other 

 scholastics of lesser rank. Yet the mental awakening 

 implied in their efforts was sure to extend to other 

 fields, and in point of fact there was at least one con- 

 temporary of these great scholastics whose mind was 

 intended towards scientific subjects, and who pro- 



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