SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 447 



tion. They were Albertus Magnus, the teacher of the other two, Thomas 

 Aquinas and Soger Bacon. All three of them were together at the 

 University of Paris shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. 

 Any one who wants to know anything about the attitude of mind of 

 the medieval universities, their professors and students and of all the 

 intellectual world of the time towards science and observation and ex- 

 periment, should read the books of these men. Any other mode of 

 getting at any knowledge of the real significance of the science of this 

 time is mere pretense. These constitute the documents behind any 

 scientific history of the development of science at this time. 



It is extremely interesting to see the attitude of these men with 

 regard to authority. In Albert's tenth book (of his "Summa") in 

 which he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants and herbs known 

 in his time he observes : " All that is here set down is the result of our 

 own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to 

 have written what their personal experience has confirmed ; for in these 

 matters experience alone can be of certainty." In his impressive Latin 

 phrase " experimentum solum certificat in talibus." "With regard to 

 the study of nature in general he was quite as emphatic. He was a 

 theologian as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on " The Heavens 

 and The Earth " he declared that " in studying nature we have not to 

 inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures 

 to work miracles and thereby show forth His power. "We have rather 

 to inquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring 

 to pass." 2 



Just as striking quotations on this subject might be made from 

 Soger Bacon. Indeed, Bacon was quite impatient with the scholars 

 around him who talked over much, did not observe enough, depended 

 to excess on authority and in general did as mediocre scholars always 

 do, made much fuss on second-hand information — plus some filmy 

 speculations of their own. Friar Bacon, however, had one great pupil 

 whose work he thoroughly appreciated because it exhibited the opposite 

 qualities. This was Petrus — we have come to know him as Peregrinus 

 — whose observations on magnetism have excited so much attention in 

 recent years with the republications of his epistle on the subject. It is 

 really a monograph on magnetism written in the thirteenth century. 

 Soger Bacon's opinion of it and of its author furnishes us the best pos- 

 sible index of his attitude of mind towards observation and experiment 

 in science. 



I know of only one person who deserves praise for Ms work in experi- 

 mental philosophy for he does not care for the discourses of men and their 

 wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. 

 Therefore what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this 

 man contemplates in all their brilliancy because he is a master of experiment. 



2 "De ccelo et mundo," 1, tr. iv., x. 



