88 Shank
related devices such as the abacus, would typify the hands- on quadrivium
teaching of the eleventh century. The same era witnessed unprecedented
developments in the rationalization of law,^22 which motivated the search
for more aids to systematic reasoning. Without having an axiomatic de-
ductive system, scholars used hints from Boëthius effectively to construct
the criteria for one: “the fact that he described his procedure as that of
‘mathematics and other sciences’ [in mathematica... ceterisque disciplinis]
led medieval authors before the introduction of Aristotle’s Posterior Analyt-
ics to try to develop a general theory of scientifi c method from it.”^23 Such
efforts are signs of the scholars’ intense craving for knowledge and for the
tools necessary to acquire and organize it.TWELFTH- CENTURY PHYSICA
The enthusiasm of the Latins for translating Arabic works culminated be-
tween 1140 and 1180 and stimulated wide- ranging ferment in most cate-
gories of learning. In the early twelfth century, Adelard of Bath’s (d. 1152)
contacts with Islamic civilization led him to think of his own culture
as impoverished.^24 Arabic offered access to not only Greek mathemat-
ics, natural philosophy, medicine, and logic in translation but also many
original products of Islamic civilization in these fi elds. Nature became
an obsession that transpires in the writings, often poems, of the masters
associated with the cathedral schools (Bernard Sylvestris’s Cosmographia,
Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature), in the sculpture that decorated the cathe-
drals themselves, and in law, where natural law took on unprecedented
importance.^25
While lopsided developments in logic were upsetting the traditional
balance of the trivium, the liberal arts also came under fi re from a differ-
ent direction. In the 1120s, William of Conches’s Philosophia proposed to
“dissolve the marriage of Mercury and Philology.” His attack on Martianus
Capella’s book was both rhetorical and substantive. Beyond his disdain for
eloquence, William proposed a clarifi cation of the roles of philosophy and
physica that was inspired by the new medical and natural philosophical
learning associated with Constantine the African and medical teaching in
Salerno.^26 As William emphasized, the philosophus and the physicus each
consider the same objects from the created world. The former focuses on
the fact of their existence (treated as necessary), while the latter considers
the explanation of their existence (treated as probabilis, that is, plausible).
Although the fi rst chapter of Genesis asserts the existence of various be-
ings (the fact), it does not explain how they came into being. William in-