Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/11

Rh Persia and Syria. Fortunately they were impressed by the Syrian scholarship, and Syrian scholars were given place in the courts of the Caliphs, and such works of the science of the ancient Greeks as were in their possession were translated into Syriac and Arabic, and thus such authors as Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, Zosimus and Aristotle became accessible to Arabian scholars and served as the foundation to the science of the Arabians.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries these Syrian schools were in their turn suppressed by Mohammedan fanatics and the Arabians themselves became the principal guardians of ancient science. Arabian translations of Greek authorities and the works of Arabian commentators, often translated into Latin, became the authoritative sources of medieval science. So completely indeed had the original Greek works disappeared from Europe that later centuries assumed that the Arabians were the originators of much that they merely acquired and transmitted from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians through Syrian and Arabian translations. Arabian physicians, astronomers, mathematicians and alchemists became the teachers of science to the Europe of the middle ages.

The original literature of the ancient world having practically disappeared from Europe during the early middle ages, science and philosophy had reached a low ebb. The medieval Christian Church was also discouraging in its attitude toward scientific discovery and philosophic reasoning. Clerical authorities and the scholastic learning became more and more intolerant of dissenting opinions or any kind of free thought. Stagnation in science was the consequence, especially in the natural sciences. In medicine, for example, experiment and independent observation hardly existed. The works of Avicenna, Averroes, Mesue and other Arabian interpreters of the Greek authors Galen and Hippocrates were the recognized authorities, and even in the universities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the teaching of medicine consisted in reading and expounding the works of these authors. The works of Galen and Hippocrates themselves were indeed hardly known in their original purity, but as elaborated with infusions of Arabian mysticism and superstitions, symbolism and astrology.

Other sciences exhibited similar tendencies. Astronomy had degenerated from the rationality of Pythagoras or of Ptolemy into a stereotyped Ptolemaism mixed with astrology. The doctrines of Aristotle as interpreted and corrupted by similar influences were the accepted natural philosophy. The condition of chemistry was similar. While mining, metallurgy and other ancient arts of chemistry maintained their continuity in spite of barbarian invasions or Mohammedan conquests, and gradually added to their store of useful facts, the generalizations or theories which have always been essential to great advances in science had deteriorated to a condition which might be