>>Thank you for joining me in the History of Science Collections of the University of
Oklahoma Libraries. Let's look at a few treasures from the vault that throw light on the story
of science in the later Roman Empire after Galen and Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. Let's
consider seven writers to represent science in late antiquity: Macrobius, Martianus Capella,
and Augustine in the 5th century; John Philoponus, Benedict, and Isidore of Seville in the 6th
century; and Bede at the beginning of the 7th century and the onset of the Middle Ages.
This is a commentary by Marcrobius upon a classic story by Cicero, which described a
vision given to the Roman general Scipio. In a dream, Scipio ascended through the heavens,
somewhat like Dante's tale centuries later, until the Earth receded into a pale blue dot
in the distance.
Scipio reported, "From here the Earth appeared so small that I was ashamed of our empire
which is, so to speak, but a point on its surface." This edition of Macrobius's cosmology
was printed in 1521. This book, by Martianus Capella, is titled The Marriage of Philology
and Mercury, which is difficult to translate, but means something like the marriage of speech
and insight. Capella here described the seven liberal arts, that is, the education appropriate
to a free citizen rather than a slave. According to Capella, the first three liberal arts are
grammar--how to write well, logic--how to think well, and rhetoric--how to speak well.
These three are the trivium. Next come the last four liberal arts, the quadrivium. These
four are all mathematical sciences, beginning with arithmetic--the study of numbers, and
geometry--the study of magnitudes like lines and circles. Then, if numbers are put in motion,
we have music--a branch of arithmetic. If magnitudes are put in motion, we have astronomy--a
branch of geometry. So music and astronomy, for Capella as for the Pythagoreans, are sister
sciences.
Here is Augustine at work in his study, writing the City of God. This copy of Augustine's
City of God was printed in Venice in 1489. Augustine provides an example of an emerging
theistic perspective on nature. Augustine's Christian Platonism encouraged the study of
mathematics. His emphasis on the contingent character of being and the created order required
empirical methods to confirm the conclusions of reason and logic. And his arguments that
space and time are fellow creatures and not eternal contributed to a sense that even nature
has a history and can only be understood in terms of its unfolding over time. In this
edition, the text of Augustine's City of God appears in the center surrounded by glosses,
or commentary. Augustine was the bishop of Hippo in the Roman province of Africa, or
present-day Algeria. The formative influence of Northern Africa, from Hero of Alexandria
to Ptolemy to Augustine, upon later European culture was both immense and unexpectedly
diverse. This manuscript on vellum is an Ethiopian bible, likely handmade during training for
the priesthood by the young man who would later use it.
This little book, annotated in this copy, is On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
On the Consolation of Philosophy was perhaps the most widely copied non-religious work
in medieval and early modern Europe, translated by King Alfred, Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth
I, among many others. It was read and often memorized in part by nearly every educated
European through the 18th century. Boethius wrote it while imprisoned for apparent treason,
perhaps knowing that his execution was imminent. The overall theme, the consolation brought
by philosophy, is the insight that an order or providence underlies all things in nature
or in human affairs, including even the greatest misfortunes. This was a tenant shared by Stoics
and Christians. Boethius suggested that because providence orders nature according to constant
laws, therefore one may have faith that the same providence also orders human lives, even
in the midst of suffering. The natural order thus underlies for the philosopher an ethical
posture of acceptance of fortune, whether good or bad. On the Consolation of Philosophy
illustrates how through the time period studied in this course, science held a central place
in education, precisely because it was not an isolated or specialized endeavor. Rather,
science was regarded as natural philosophy, perceived as of great relevance to other areas
of philosophy and human knowledge, particularly ethics and theology. The meaning of science
was intimately related to the meaning of life.
This work published in 1504 is a critique of Aristotle by the ancient physicist and
theologian, John Philoponus. In the 6th century, in Athens, Philoponus used the example of
a top to formulate a theory of an impressed incorporeal motive force. This force keeps
the top spinning long after an initial impulse and likewise keeps an arrow flying. Philoponus
carried out his work in the tradition of Basil the Great's commentary on Genesis, in which
Basil had himself used the top to critique Aristotle's physics in a similar way. Philoponus
dropped objects of varying weights from the top of a tall tower, recording the differences
in time for them to hit the ground. As any modern student of physics knows, the time
of fall is not proportional to the weight of an object as one might assume given Aristotle's
physics. Although this experiment critiquing Aristotle is often falsely attributed to Galileo
at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Philoponus used this experimental evidence back in the 6th
century to refute Aristotle's theory of natural motion and to construct an important anti-Aristotelian
tradition in the physics of motion. Philoponus's idea of an impressed motive force carried
on in the works of Islamic physicists and was revived again in the 14th century impetus
theory of Jean Buriden, which we will examine in a later week as the foundation for 17th
century theories of inertia.
Isidore of Seville wrote this book, The Etymologies, as the Roman Empire was crumbling around him
in 6th century Spain. The Goths had controlled Spain for two centuries already, and educational
institutions were languishing in the remnants of the old empire. Isidore founded a cathedral
school in Seville to halt this decline, and thereafter The Etymologies served many medieval
students as an encyclopedia of basic knowledge. In one interesting section of The Etymologies,
Isidore listed monstrous forms of humans including birth defects and deformed races reported
in travelers' tales. Isidore thus provided the inspiration for the dufflepuds and other
creatures in C.S. Lewis's Narnia tales. Because of the encyclopedic or database approach of
The Etymologies, Isidore is now regarded as the patron saint of the internet and the information
age, which we can represent by this 1984 Macintosh. The first mass-marketed computer with a mouse
and windows-based user interface. Isidore would've loved using HyperCard on the Mac,
and this one still works.
Finally in this book, Bede, an English monk, explained how to calculate the date of Easter
as the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the March equinox. Not a trivial date
to determine. Bede's On the Reckoning of Time including explanations on the changing length
of the day, the seasonal motions of the sun, the spherical shape of the Earth, and the
tides as caused by the influence of the moon. With Isidore and Bede, the Roman Empire recedes.
We have reached the boundary between late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Science is
a story. What stories do you want to hear and tell about science in the later Roman
era?