Dr. Farooq's Study
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The New Humanism |
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Introduction by the Translator |
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WHEN one speaks of the history of science most people think of experimental and mathematical knowledge as we know it now, with its inexhaustible harvest of applications; they think of what we would call "modern science," the development of which was hardly started before the seventeenth century. This is of course justifiable in some respects, yet he who was acquainted only with that part of the story would have a very misleading idea of the whole evolution. It is as if he knew a man only in his maturity and was not aware that such maturity was made possible only by the long years of childhood and adolescence. This recalls my comparison of mankind with a single man, and how it helped us to understand both. Let us return to it once more. What would you think of a biography which began, let us say, at a time when the hero was thirty, was married and already had children, and was well started on his work? Would not such a biography be very disappointing? For we would want to know how he got started, whom he had married, how he became interested in his chosen work and gradually devoted all of his thought and energy to it. For exactly the same reasons a history of science beginning only in the sixteenth or seventeenth century is not only incomplete but fundamentally wrong. This is even more true in the case of mankind than in that of a single man, because in the latter case we can at least imagine various possibilities. If we have read many biographies of men of science we have in our minds a sort of composite picture of their youth which may serve as a first approximation. But in the case of mankind it is simply impossible to imagine the history of the four or five millennia of recorded experience which preceded the advent of modern science. It is unfortunately true that many scientists lack a cultural background, and because of this do not like to look backward. It is a vicious circle: why should they look that way if there is nothing for them to see? Their history of science does not even go as far back as the seventeenth century; they are prone to believe that almost everything worthwhile was done in the nineteenth or in the twentieth century. Now in this they are most certainly wrong. The most astounding results were obtained in the most recent times, simply because they were the latest; but these results were made possible only by all antecedent efforts; they would have been utterly impossible without them. All the preparatory work left undone by our ancestors would have to be done by us now or by our children later. The results of the present are more complex, and more valuable than those of the past, in fact they have superseded the latter; but there is every reason to suppose that in their turn they will be superseded by those of the future. At all times there have been "moderns" who could not help thinking that their ways as compared with those of the " ancients " were almost final. One of the main functions of the history of science is to correct such mistakes and to give us, who are the "modems" of to-day, a less conceited view of our share in the total of human evolution. Of course this age of ours is a very wonderful one, and for us who are living in it, is undoubtedly for that very reason the most wonderful of all, but we must bear in mind that such privileged ages have succeeded one another as the generations themselves. Even as young lovers have sincerely felt in their exaltation that the world was never more beautiful than as they saw it, even so each great discovery which enabled scientists to penetrate somewhat deeper below appearances and to push the barriers of ignorance and darkness a little further away, may have given them the illusion that they had finally reached the heart of the mystery and that they were the first to understand the universe thoroughly. There is also a very good practical and philosophical motive for devoting at least as much attention to the more distant achievements as to the later ones, and that is, that the former, although so much easier to explain, give us a far better conception of the meaning of scientific evolution. To begin with they are spread over a much longer period. Modern science, as defined above, is after all hardly more than three centuries old, while the previous evolution was a matter of more than four millennia, that is, without counting the innumerable centuries of which we have no definite records. The development of ancient and mediaeval science is not only a much longer stretch, but if I may put it so, a collection of stretches of various lengths interrupted and bent by all kinds of vicissitudes. When we consider the whole of it, we can verify the fact that human evolution is infinitely more complex than the very orderly process of the last centuries would indicate. Scientific research is now organized with such elaboration and in so many countries that a long and complete interruption of it is hardly conceivable, and that we almost expect discoveries to follow each other without cease and without end. In the distant past, on the contrary, there was so much discontinuity and hesitation in scientific progress, that the latter seemed to be even more fortuitous than it really was. A discovery was like a gold nugget that one might stumble upon or not according to one's luck. By way of contrast much of the scientific work of today might be compared to the systematic exploitation of a gold mine, the average output of which can be foretold. That comparison is a little exaggerated on both sides, but the fact remains that scientific progress was far more erratic in the past than it is now, and that considerably more energy was wasted in vain efforts and along hopeless paths. As a result a vision of mediaeval man groping for the truth is somewhat bewildering: he seems to be going in too many directions at once and to be turning in circles. There is a general direction however, but to perceive it one must look from a great distance and be able to disregard all the irrelevant movements, all the stops, lapses, detours and retrogressions. We are now sufficiently distant from ancient or even mediaeval science to appreciate the meaning of almost every step of it, true or false. On the contrary we cannot yet see the latest developments of science in their true perspective. Of course, we believe we can; we think in good faith that we can single out the most pregnant discoveries of our own days, but the whole of past history is there to testify that contemporary judgments are always precarious. This is natural enough. The value of a theory, the importance of a fact, depend entirely on the conclusions which may be derived from them, on the fruits they will bear, and scientists are not prophets. Comte's saying "Savoir afin de prevoir" is often misquoted. It is true the scientist is able to foresee and to anticipate the immediate consequences of certain events, and therein lies the secret of his material power. But he is not able to predict the future except within the very narrow sector controlled by his knowledge and even there he is hedged in with all kinds of restrictions. Indeed no man is more chary of predictions than the true scientist. There are two main reasons for studying the history of science: a purely historical one, to analyze the development of civilization, i.e., to understand man, and a philosophical one, to understand the deeper meaning of science. Now from either point of view, the history of ancient and mediaeval science is at least as useful as that of modern science. He who knows only one of these histories does not really know the history of science, nor does he know the history of civilization. I shall try to make this more concrete by dealing at greater length with the earlier parts of our history. If it were not so futile to pick out a single period as the best -for each period was the best from a certain point of view and each was an indispensable link in the chain of ages -I would say in opposition to the uncritical scientist that the most important was, not the latest, but the earliest. Nothing is more difficult than to begin. And what can be more fundamental than a good beginning? Is it not the foundation upon which all the rest will be built? Unfortunately we shall never have any adequate information on this, the most critical period of man's history, when he was gratifying his urgent needs and slowly emerging out of the darkness, when his instinctive craving for power and for knowledge was beginning to appear. Who first thought of kindling a fire? Who invented the earliest stone implements? Who domesticated the animals which have shared our lives ever since? How did language develop? And later, much later, writing? Who conceived the wheel? Just think of these discoveries and of their infinite implications. Without articulate language man remained an animal. Without writing, the safe transmission and preservation of knowledge were impossible. Progress implies safekeeping of what we already have. Without writing, the accumulation of knowledge was precarious and limited, progress small and uncertain. Can anyone of our modern discoveries, however startling, begin to compare with those which made possible all the others? And yet we know nothing about them. We can hardly guess. It is probable that they involved the secular collaboration of thousands of men, each big step forward being finally secured by the exceptional genius of some of them. The evolutions leading to each of these fundamental discoveries were exceedingly slow -almost comparable to the biologic transitions from one type to an- other -so slow that the people who took part in them were utterly unaware of them. Genius was then required only from time to time to clinch the results obtained by the unconscious accumulation of infinitesimal efforts, to secure what was gained and prepare another slow movement in the same general direction. The total evolution which prepared the dawn of science must have taken tens of thousands of years. By the beginning of the third millennium before Christ it was already completed in at least two countries: Mesopotamia and Egypt, and possibly in two others, India and China. The people of Mesopotamia and Egypt had then already attained a high stage of culture including the use of writing, and a fair amount of mathematical, astronomical and medical knowledge. Thus it would seem proved that civilization began in the East. Ex oriente lux, ex occidente lex. From the East came the light, from the West, law! This aphorism contains a good deal of truth and might be chosen as the motto of my lecture. Let me say right away that my aim is to show the immense contributions which Eastern people made to our civilization, even if our idea of civilization is focused upon science. We are used to think of our civilization as western, we continually oppose our western ways to the eastern ways, and we have some- times the impression that the opposition is irreducible. "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Now that impression is false, and as it is likely to do considerable mischief in both East and West, it is worthwhile to disclose the error as fully as possible. However divided it may be with regard to material interests and other trifles, mankind is essentially united with regard to its main purpose. East and West are often opposed one to the other, but not necessarily so, and it is wiser to consider them as two visages, or let us say, as two moods of the same man. Ex oriente lux! There is no doubt whatever that our earliest scientific knowledge is of oriental origin. As to the possible Chinese and Hindu origins we can not say much that is definite, but on the contrary with regard to Mesopotamia and Egypt we are on very solid ground. For example, as early as the middle of the fourth millennium the Egyptians were already acquainted with a decimal system of numbers. In an inscription of that time there is reference to 120,000 captives, 400,000 oxen and 1,422,000 goats, each decimal unit being represented by a special symbol. By the middle of the following millennium Sumerian had developed a highly technical system of accounting. The astronomical knowledge of these people was equally remarkable. The Egyptian calendar of 365 days was established in 4241. Babylonians accumulated planetary observations for astrological purpose; e.g., elaborate observations of Venus go back to the twentieth century. They compiled lists of stars and were soon able to predict eclipses. That early knowledge was not only abundant, but highly systematized. In the case of Egypt we are especially well informed because we have two early papyri, each of which might be called a treatise. The earliest, the Golenishchev papyrus of Moscow, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century but is copied from an older document of the end of the third millennium; the second, the Rhind papyrus, kept in London and New York, dates from the middle of the seventeenth century but is a copy of a text which may be at least two centuries older. The second of these texts has been studied with extreme care by a number of investigators. The latest edition of it by Arnold Buffum Chace, chancellor of Brown University, Ludlow Bull, H.P. Manning, and R.C. Archibald (1927-29) is at once so complete and so attractive that I am sure it will turn the hearts of many men and women to the study of Egyptian antiquities. I imagine that the first reaction of some people, if they were shown these sumptuous volumes, would be one of wonder that so much time and money should have been spent on an early text of so little scientific value from the point of view of our present knowledge, but I am sure that it would not take long to convert them to an entirely different attitude. For just think what it means, Here we have a mathematical treatise which was written more that thirteen centuries before the time of Euclid! To be sure it does not compare with the latter’s Elements, and we are not surprised that more than a millennium of addition efforts were needed to build up the latter, but it contains already such elaborate results that we must consider it, not as a beginning, but rather as a climax, the climax of a very long evolution. The Egyptian mathematicians of the seventeenth century were already able to solve complicated problems involving determinate and indeterminate equations of the first degree and even of the second, their arithmetical ingenuity was astounding, they used the method of false position and the rule of three, they could find the area of a circle and of a sphere with a very remarkable approximation, they could measure the volume of a cylinder and of the frustum of a square pyramid. But is it necessary to insist upon their mathematical accomplishments? Pyramids? Did I not mention pyramids? Do not these gigantic witnesses of the Egyptian genius speak loud enough? The great pyramid of Gizeh dates from the beginning of the thirtieth century. In our age of mechanical wonders, its mass is still as imposing as when it was built almost five thousand years ago; it seems as permanent as the hills and in all probability will outlast most of the skyscrapers of which we are so proud. However startling our first vision of it, our admiration increases as we analyze the achievement and measure the amount of mathematical and engineering skill, of experience and discipline which were needed to bring it to a successful conclusion. No wonder that so many scholars lost their wits for pondering too much on the subject! If we pass to medicine, other surprises are in store for us. The Greek god of healing, Asclepius, was but a descendant of the Egyptian on, Imhotep, and the history of the latter can be traced back to a real personality, that of a learned physician who flourished probably at the beginning of the thirtieth century. What does this mean again? We often speak of Hippocrates, and we like to call him the Father of Medicine; we shall better appreciate Imhotep’s antiquity when we realize that Hippocrates is more that half way between him and us. The chances are that Imhotep's medical knowledge was but rudimentary, but it cannot have been insignificant otherwise his apotheosis would hardly have occurred. However this was only a beginning, or more correctly, a new beginning. Let some thirteen centuries elapse, and we reach the golden age of Egyptian science -the age to which the Rhind papyrus belongs. Strangely enough we have also a medical treatise of the same age, the Edwin Smith papyrus, of which Professor Breasted is preparing an edition. This is not like other papyri, a collection of recipes and charms, but a systematic treatise arranged "a capite ad calcem "-from head to foot -an order which was followed down to the end of our Middle Ages. It contains the consideration of forty-eight cases, each of which is reported in the same order: name, examination, diagnosis, judgment, treatment, gloss. We await its complete publication with impatience, but what we already know of it is sufficient to give us a very high idea of early Egyptian medicine and surgery. 1 These examples will convince you that a considerable body of systematized knowledge was far anterior to Greek science. In fact this helps to explain what one might call the miracle of Greek civilization. To be sure no intelligent man could read the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were the primices of that civilization. without wondering what had made such master-papyrus was finally published in August 1980 (~ vols., University of Chicago Press); it has more than fulfilled our expectations. An elaborate analysis of it appeared in lai8 (15, 855-67). ??? surgical pieces possible. They could not possibly appear like bolts from the blue. Like every glorious beginning, this was not only the prelude of one evolution but the end, the climax, of another. Students of Greek mathematics, of Greek astronomy, and Greek medicine could not help asking themselves similar questions. How could the relative perfection of the Greek scientific treatises be accounted for? The explanation is still very incomplete, but no doubt exists as to the main fact: the Greeks borrowed a large quantity of observations and of crude theories from the Egyptians and the peoples of Mesopotamia. Unfortunately it is hardly possible in any case to de scribe the complete transmission of elements from say, Egypt to Hellas. This is partly due to the revolutionary events which occurred about the beginning of the first millennium; these events were probably connected with the early use of iron (instead of bronze) and almost obliterated the older Aegean culture. Our ignorance may be dissipated by lab archeological discoveries, for example by the d ciphering of Minoan and Mycenrean texts, but it doubtful whether the whole story will ever be revealed to us, for the introduction of the iron age was an upheaval of extraordinary magnitude and destructiveness. At any rate in the present state of our knowledge, there is a gap of more than a thousand years between the golden age of Egyptian science and the golden age of Greek science. We are certain that much of the Greek knowledge was borrowed from eastern sources but we do not know exactly when or how the borrowings took place. For example, the incubation rites which were practised in the Greek Asclepieia were in all probability derived from Egyptian models. These rites were very important from our point of view because thanks to them a large number of clinical observations were concentrated in the temples, especially in the most famous' ones, Epidauros and Pergamon, Cos and Cnidos. The value of such concentration requires no emphasis, least of all for the medical art, for to make scientific inductions, it is not enough to have observations, one must have plenty of them. Without some means of collecting abundant clinical cases as were afforded by the Asclepieia, the progress of medicine would have been considerably slower. It is not too much to say that the Asclepieia were the cradles of Greek medicine, and they help to account for the extraordinary richness of the Hippocratic collection, -but we must not forget that they themselves inherited and continued Egyptian traditions. On the other hand, Greek astronomy was largely of Babylonian origin, though it was also inspired by Egyptian examples. The Babylonian influence continued to make itself felt throughout historic times, and it is probable that the precession of the equinoxes was first discovered not by Hipparch but by the Babylonian astrologer, Kidinnu (c. 343 B.C.); whether Hipparch borrowed that discovery from Kidinnu or not, it is certain that he could not have made it without reference to the ancient Babylonian observations. With regard to arithmetic, the continuation of Babylonian and Egyptian influences is very striking. The Greek preference for expressing ordinary fractions as the sum of fractions with numerator unity and their use of a special symbol for 2/3 were obviously Egyptian relics, while their sexagesimal fractions were Babylonian. There is perhaps no more fascinating subject than the study of the transition from oriental science to the early Greek, and the archeeological investigations which are being feverishly conducted by scholars of many nationalities all over the Near East are keeping it in a state of flux which is in itself a stimulus. It is perhaps wiser not to indulge in predictions with regard to such a live subject; yet it is safe to say that, however numerous the Greek borrowings may prove to have been, the blossoming of the Greek scientific genius remains almost equally difficult to account for. Students of art and literature are confronted with a similar difficulty, and when we speak of the "Greek miracle" we do nothing but confess it and admit our ignorance. In fact the difficulty a the miracle are even greater in the case of science than in that of art, for there are Egyptian statues of the early dynasties which are not a whit inferior to the best Greek productions, while the Egyptian scientific treatises, however remarkable especially when their high antiquity is considered, do not begin to compare with their Greek offspring. Between the scribe Ahmose (the writer of the Rhind papyrus) and, say, Hipporcrates of Chios, there is such a gigantic difference that some critics have gone as far as to deny the scientific nature of the Egyptian work altogether and to consider it only as a collection of empirical recipes. In this they were certainly mistaken for the Egyptian knowledge was far from being fragmentary and accidental; it was already methodic to a degree, and hence scientific. Yet the doubts of these critics are somewhat justified by the immensity of the gap. We do not know what happened between the seventeenth and the sixth centuries, and it would be rash to conclude that the Egyptian knowledge was not gradually improved; however the chances are that the main improvements were made not by Egyptians, not by Minoans or Mycenaeans (whoever these were), but by Greeks, the favored people whose earliest "Book" and witness was the Iliad. And these improvements were of such magnitude that they raised science up to a higher level. When a student of ancient science grows a little rhapsodical about it, we may be tempted to ascribe his enthusiasm to the onesidedness and the consequent blindness of his devotion. But I have devoted far more time and thought to the science of the Middle Ages than to that of Antiquity, and my admiration for the latter has not ceased to increase as I knew the former better. The spirit of Greek science, which accomplished such wonders within a period of about five centuries, was essentially the western spirit, whose triumphs are the boast of modern scientists. But we must bear in mind two important qualifications. First that the foundations of that Greek science were wholly oriental, and however deep the Greek genius it is not certain that it could have built anything comparable to its actual achievements without these foundations. When discussing the fate of a man of genius we may wonder what would have happened if he had other parents, for then he would never have been. In the same way we have no right to disregard the Egyptian father and the Mesopotamian mother of the Greek genius. In the second place, while that genius was creating what might be called (in opposition to Egyptian science on one hand and to mediaeval science on the other) the beginning of modern science, another development, equally miraculous, but of an entirely different kind, was taking place in an oriental country near the easternmost end of the Mediterranean Sea. While Greek philosophers were trying to give a rational explanation of the world and boldly postulated its physical unity, the Hebrew prophets were establishing the moral unity of mankind upon the notion of a single God. These two developments were not parallel but complementary; they were equally momentous but entirely independent; in spite of their spatial proximity they proceeded fro centuries in almost complete ignorance of one another. They did not really come together until the end of the ancient times, and their union was finally cemented upon the prostrate bodies of the two civilizations which had given birth to them. 1J. H. Breasted's monumental edition of the Edwin Smith |
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George Sarton
History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton
George Sarton History of science Scientific Method Islam Arabs Experimentalism
George Sarton