52 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE 



history considerable progress was made by the Greeks. 

 Aristotle, for instance, gave an extended account of 

 the animals known in his day, with some details of 

 their anatomical structure. But in medicine, where 

 preconceived theories about the nature of man or 

 the origin of disease could be used as a basis of de- 

 ductive reasoning, the Greeks' love for this type of 

 philosophy led them astray. But even here, in the 

 school of Hippocrates (450 B.C.), rational ideas began 

 to emerge. 



The first systematic study of human anatomy 

 appears to have arisen in Alexandria under the sway 

 of the Ptolemies, induced, perhaps, by the Egyptian 

 custom of embalming the bodies of the dead. From 

 Alexandria, too, a knowledge of Greek learning spread 

 among the Moors and Arabs, by them to be re- 

 imported into Western Europe when the chaos of 

 the dark ages which followed the decay and fall of 

 Rome was giving place to better days. 



The great revival of thought and learning which 

 took place in Europe throughout the thirteenth 

 century proved singularly unfertile in the advance of 

 scientific knowledge. Francis, Lord Bacon, writing 

 three hundred years later, comments on the un- 

 serviceable character of the facts gleaned by the 

 men of learning up to that period, and calls attention 

 to the want of direction and organised system which 

 impeded mankind in the advance towards mastery 

 over the forces of nature. 



