THE SALVAGE OF SCIENCE

Evening Star, Issue 21745, 13 June 1934, Page 14

THE SALVAGE OF SCIENCE

EUROPE'S DEBT TO ISLAM ADDRESS BY DR DAWSON * Europe’s Debt to Islam: The Salvage of Science,’ was i the subject of an interesting address given by Dr J, B. Dawson to members of the Classical ■Association on Monday evening. “ It is not because I have any knowledge of the classics, but because the history of medicine, which has been a hobby of mine, is closely interwoven with that of all the sciences and also with the general history of mankind, that I have, ventured to read this paper,” said Dr Dawson. The tendency of ordinary elementary teaching of history is to give to children, a restricted and merely national purview, which may persist throughout life unless we have the good fortune to discover by accident "or design that long before and during the short period of English history people were born, lived, loved, fought.'and died, establishing civilisations or great power, erudition, and culture.- .. ■ “ It is important to understand that in the grey dawn of man’s history there, were the elements of_ science. Primitive man confused, life with motion; wind; storms, lightning, eclipse, earthquake. were signs of evil spirits or demons. The. natural was the supernatural to his.inexperience, and he therefore worshipped sun. moon, stars,- trees; rivers, fire, or, animals. Accidental association of ideas, such as misfortune coincidental with the presence of some animal, lead to the belief in a personal or tribal toterti. Misfortunes, especially those of illness or disease, were attributed to tho malevolent influences of. spirits, who must be placated or intimidated with sacrificial or noisy ceremony. ■ Quickly there followed an inanimate representation of his gods and the attendant priest, witch doctor;, or medicine, man. The need of a mediator between man and his: god and the doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice, vicarious or direct, remain as . elements in . modern religious systems. .“ In the kincjly. fertily Valley oy the Nile,” said the lecturer, “ neolithic man first raised '. himself above his neighbours and initiated, the civilisation of the Mediterranean Basin that, was to dominate the world for 4,000 years. Professor Elliot Smithy suggests that the discovery of copper in Egypt •forged the instrument that raised (•{visitation out of the .slough of the Stone Age.’ Both in Egypt and in the Sumerain civilisation of Mesopotamia the primitive sciences were profoundly intermingled and vitiated by witchcraft and magic. the grip of the priestly urerogative was, firm and tenacious. With the growth of the civilisations of Phoenicia, Crete.’ and finally Greece, this supernatural hold upon the growing sciences was slowly relaxed until the deductive methods and speculative plplgsophy of ‘ Hippocrates and’ Aristotle nourished the infant'sciences to a lusty childhood. The, glories of the. cultural life of” Greece ‘survived the doivhfa,ll of 'the nation and leavened the classical world from the Indus Valiev to the Western Mediterranean. After the death, of Alexander, the dynasties founded by bis warring captains. such as Soleucis in Asia Minor, and Ptolemy in Egypt, carried on the tradition to that on the Eastern Mediterranean seaboard and throughout Asia Minor, Transcaucasia. Turkestan. Bokhara, and the confines of India, colony’ after colony. Grecian in language, civic organisation, legal procedure, and cultural development, preserved the erudition of the golden age of Hellenic art and science. After Greece , came the dominance of Rome, biit the Romans were warriors, and for medicine, for science, for art. they looked to the Greeks. Such studies were beneath the dignity of the patrician and were rescued from the hands of a few enlightened slaves by the Grecian savants who sought under the Roman eagles the security that is necessary, for academic pursuits. So long as, that security remained the sciences made progress, although, perhaps. the true spirit of investigation and speculation became overlain by a tnore commercial one enforced by the necessities of life in an extravagant Imperial city. • “ A short span of safety endured for a century or two when the final crash of the Mediterranean civilisations- came from the bauds of the marauding tribes of Northern Europe and Asia. After the sack of Rome, civilisation was overwhelmed by. a darkness that lasted for 1,000 years, years during which men stood at bay. sword in hand, to defend their lives.' their women, and their granaries. Scientific pursuits and altruistic endeavour were impossible for hunted men. 'Phis will be the more readily understood when it is remembered that the city of Amsterdam was burnt by the Vikings three times in four years.. It was not, except for a short interregnum under the dominating force ’of Charlemagne, until the thirteenth century that some pleasure of personal and_ national security permitted men again to consider the proplems rather than the mere destruction of life, During this long dark period the world, with all it had learnt of science and art, was plunged_ into a quagmire- of savage and barbaric warfare that annihilated and despoiled, leaving little trace of the earlier culture of the Mediterranean basin.

■'Fortunately, through Ibis quagmire there filtered three small streams which conveyed to later ages a hazardous freightage of the wisdom of Greece. One of these, known as the Byzantine School, had its origin in the Eastern Roman Empire which. being more stable than that of the West, afforded some opportunity for scientific study. Another flowed through Salernum m the south of Italy, in some measure a backwater out of the course of invasion and race migration, where a valueable school of medicine and of science flourished for several centuries. This Salernitan school became, by its geographical position, the meeting place of Norman, Lombard, and Saracen. Its trilingual students, speaking Greek, Latin, and Arabic, were able to translate direct from the Greek authors.

“ The third agency of salvage of early science was Arabian culture. The decadent Arab of to-day gives ns no idea of the erudition, wisdom, and wealth of the Moslem Empires of the seventh to the fifteenth centuries. For 800 years the Moslems were the dominant power that by force of arms enforced upon vast territories order and peace. It is amazing to contemplate the transformation of a pastoral nomadic people in the arid regions of Arabia into an. all-conquering warrior race which made itself master of half the world in 100 years, but it is, perhaps, more amazing to realise how promptly and energetically they set themselves to acquire the knowledge of the sciences that was required to complete their greatness, ft is a mistake to imagine that the Moslem armies left devastation behind them. Some destruction is an inevitable concomitant of war. but the Arab was a just man. and permitted considerable liberty to the conquered. He was. moreover, anxious to graft bis own ideas on to the best that he found in his own do-

mains. In their, •' victorious sweep across', Asia Minor to'the wails of Con stantinople the Arab's tame into close contact with Grecian civilisation in the old' colonial settlements of Alexander and Seleucis, wherein much of the culture of Athens remained unimpaired.. “ Not only was this so among the descendants of the Greek colonists, but the Syriac subjects of the country had adopted much from their former conquerors, and had translated much Hellenic literature into Syriac. In the early days of Arabic predominance all science and speculative ’ philosophy was thought to be at variance with the true leaching of the Koran, but as the settled dynasties, of Caliphates were established the raonarchs delighted to encourage the students; in fact, the entourage of these ' wealthy Moslem potentates was. incomplete unless it included an ‘ intelligentsia ’ of learned men.

“This assemblage of savants was, in the earlier days of Islamic power, comprised mainly of men engaged in copying and codifying the Syriac texts of the Grecian philosophers, but it was not long before independent thought and progressive research emerged. The suggestions, derived..from Greek books of the different sciences, mathematics, astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, chemistry, - grammar, and logic which had been translated into Syriac under the Eastern Roman Empire and , into Arabic under the Mohammedan Caliphates, gave rise to an Arabic scientific literature much more advanced than any produced in the West at that time.

“We have seen that this Arabic school of science came into contact with the disintegrated West at Salernum, but there was another and much broader- contact in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain soon after the downfall of Rome became a Visigoth kingdom professing a debased form of Christianity and offering a rich bait for the victorious Arabs of Northern Africa. The all-conquering warriors leapt across the Straits of Gibraltar to the conquest of Spain, their triumphant campaigns being only arrested by Charles Martel at the Battle of Toulouse in 720 a.d. For 800 years the Moslem kingdoms of Spain nourished and enlarged all that was best of the erudition of Greece. They produced many physicians and scientists of their own. sometimes true Arabs, but often subject people whose desire for academic studies was always encouraged by the enlightened Caliphs. “ To Seville, to Cordova, to Malaga, to Granada students from all parts of Western Europe came to translate the Arabic text books into the scientific Latin of the time. The early universities of Pisa, Montpellier, and Louvain owed much of their literature, thus obtained, to the Arabian schools of medicine and of science. The Canon of Medicine of Avicenna, a Moslem subject o fßokhara, was the standard text book in the medical schools of Europe until 1650 a.u. To the Moslem Arab, to his victories and the security that followed, to his chivalrous treatment of conquered peoples, to his interest in and fostering of scientific pursuits, we owe that preservation of the scientific lore and literature of Greece which permitted of the amazing and swift transition from medieval stagnation to the increasing volume of sound scholarship and true science that adorned the Renaissance.” A warm vote of thanks was passed to Hi' Dawson for his interesting address.