Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catherine Misrahi. New York:
Fordham University Press, 1974.
Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
SCIENCE
. We begin with a distinction between what the medievals called “science” (scientia) and
what, if anything, corresponds to our modern understanding of the term. Scientia,
following Aristotle meant systematic knowledge, organized through
principles, so that philosophy and theology were “sciences” along with physics and
mathematics. Prior to the 12th century, “science” meant the Quadrivium (arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy) and the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), which
together comprised the notion of Liberal Arts. In the 12th and 13th centuries, translations
into Latin from the Arabic (by Gerard of Cremona [d. 1187]) and from the Greek (by
William of Moerbeke [d. ca. 1286]) brought an explosion of “new” knowledge,
information, and disciplines into the mainstream of medieval intellectual life: Aristotle,
Euclid, Alkindi, Avicenna, Averroes, Al Farabi, Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and
Proclus, among others. These texts provided both authoritative sources and the impetus
for extension and expansion of the “sciences of nature” (called “natural philosophy”
[philosophia naturalis or physica]), While the whole is called “philosophy” (from the
Greek, [love]] and [wisdom]), classification of the parts differed. Hugh of
Saint-Victor (d. 1141) divided philosophy into theoretical, practical, mechanical, and
logical. He listed medicine among the mechanical arts and declared it a suitable
occupation for manually adept members of the lower classes. Being concerned with a
product, health, which it borrows from nature, disqualifies medical knowledge from
inclusion among the higher, more speculative branches of knowledge. Dominicus
Gundissalinus (fl. 1140) divided philosophy into two parts: theoretical and practical. The
first is further divided into physical science, mathematics, and the highest speculative
science, known variously as theology, first philosophy, or metaphysics. The second is
divided into political science, family ordering, and ethical or moral science. Gundisalvo
includes medicine among the physical sciences.
When we look for areas of knowledge cognate with our modern understanding of
science, we find mathematics, physics (including theory of weight, motion, kinetics,
dynamics, magnetism, optics), astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy,
geography, oceanography, zoology and botany, and medicine (including anatomy,
physiology, and pharmacology; medical diagnosis, treatment, and surgery). (The
inclusion of astrology and alchemy in the list suggests the affinity that medieval science
had to “magic.”) There is also great concern to provide a theoretical account of the
structure and dynamics of the universe (cosmology) as well as some attempts to reflect
upon methods.
The generally accepted cosmology rested on the assumption of an immobile earth at
the center of the universe, with the stars and planets revolving about the earth within
concentric spheres—as proposed by Ptolemy (fl. A.D. 127–51) and systematized in
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