Macromolecular Concept and Strategy for Humanity in Science, Technology and Industry Book

SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
EDITED BY
DAVID C. LINDBERG
ARTICLES REVIEWED
"THE INSTITUTIONAL SETTING: THE UNIVERSITIES"
PEARL KIBRE AND NANCY G. SIRAISI
"MEDICINE"
CHARLES H. TALBOT

"SCIENCE AND MAGIC"
BERT HANSEN
The development of the medieval universities began a legacy of institutionalized learning which influenced the future scien¬tific achievements of Western culture. The intent of Pearl Kibre and Nancy G. Siraisi in their article "The Institutional Setting: The Universities" was to show that, beginning in the twelfth cen¬tury, the first European institutions began a systematic and organized curriculum to train a large number of scholars. The importance of these schools was not the academic achievements of those who graduated but the very fact that standards of subjects, textbooks, and teaching techniques were becoming established for other institutions to emulate.
The structure of the paper was divided into three subsec¬tions. The first section discussed the monastic, abbey, and cathedral schools as the forerunners to the twelfth-century universities. The second section focused on two architypal schools north of the Alps, Paris and Oxford. These schools placed a great emphasis on the secular curriculum of the quadrivium even though the masters were of the clergy. The third section examined two schools south of the Alps, Bologna and Padua. The study of medicine was the most important discipline here while physical science was taught mainly for vocational interests and for the enhancement of medical studies. My reactions to the paper were positive. I found it inter¬esting how closely the schools of today paralleled those twelfth- century institutions. Even the four-year time period for gradua¬tion was identical. The autonomous relationship between the masters and students in the Paris and Oxford schools must have presented a tremendous learning opportunity. Today, unfortunate¬ly, students must suffer through numerous auditorium and televi¬sion classes before this situation can occur.
Medieval medicine during the ninth through the fifteenth centuries was an unprosperous period of re-examination and faulty interpretation of ancient Greek works. This failure was contrast¬ed by the great amount of time and thought expended on the sub¬ject by the medieval physicians and surgeons. The intent of Charles H. Talbot's "Medicine" was to overview a three-stage period of medieval medicine consisting of conservation, explora¬tion, and elaboration.
The article was structured with three subheadings and a conclusion. The first section on the beginnings, spanning the ninth through the eleventh centuries, was a period which brought an increase in the amount of medical texts but resulted in a simple reiteration and conservation of Greek thought. The second section discussed the gradual awakening of medieval medicine, during the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, and the exploration of new ideas. During this period, the universities began to standardize course work as medicine became an independ-ent study. The third period covering the later Middle Ages, from the fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries, elaborated on the previous work and was a time in which some significant advance¬ments were made such as skin grafting and Benivieni's systematic autopsies to discover causes of death. The conclusion discussed Talbot's three-stage outline of conservation, exploration, and elaboration, with which the previous sections were concerned.
My main criticisms were the lack of an introduction, unre¬lated section-heading names, and faulty integration of his intent into the main body of the paper. Only by first reading the con¬clusion, which could have been a good introductory paragraph, could I gain an understanding of the intent of the article. I also thought that the subheading names did not relate to each other. Either "The Awakening" should have been entitled "The Early Middle Ages" or, my preference would be, to name the sec¬tions "Conservation", "Exploration", and "Elaboration", which seemed to be the key points of his overview. He did not tie these three concepts into the article until the end of the conclusion and left it to the reader to make the necessary connections.
The age of the hidden occult forces, which was a significant feature of medieval life, has recently been argued to be a factor in the development of modern science. This magic was of the "intellectual" form which consisted of those practitioners who read and wrote books on the subject. Bert Hanson in "Science and Magic" wrote a doctrinal history which attempted to overview the magic of the Middle Ages and to contrast it with natural philoso¬phy. He also briefly discussed the relationship between science and magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Hanson's article began with an introduction on his intent and was followed by sections on characterizations, assumptions, and sources of magic and its contributions to the scientific revolution. Hanson classified magic as a technology because its objective was a specific result accomplished by controlling supernatural forces with words or symbols. These words and sym-bols were assumed to have a status such as good, evil, lucky, or unlucky. The basic assumption was that there was a final cause and that all things existed for a purpose. The remaining sources and magic books did not present a consistent genre; however, most books were concerned with experiments, secrecy, problems, and questions about phenomena. The influence of magic on the scien¬tific revolution was not on an ideological level, but rather on a practical one. The magician's manipulations of nature were an advancement from Aristotle's passive observation and was adapted into the scientific realm.
There was a quote I once read which said, "The latest in technology is indistinguishable from magic." I related this to when Hanson said that any phenomena in medieval society could lose its magical capabilities by becoming well known. For exam¬ple, artificial intelligence often seems magical in its attempt to simulate the human thought process, yet it is merely a simple stream of electronic zero's and one's pulsing through tightly packed silicon chips. Perhaps there is a place for magic in contemporary society as with the description of nascent, techno¬logical advancements. Maybe even Basalla could express it as artifacts without an obvious antecedent. The magic, however, is transitory because as soon as the majority understands it, the mysticism is gone.