THE SALVAGE OF SCIENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22286, 12 June 1934, Page 11

THE SALVAGE OF SCIENCE

EUROPE’S DEBT TO ISLAM ADDRESS TO CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION. An interesting address, entitled “Europe’s Debt to Islam; the Salvage of Science,” was presented before a large attendance of members of the Classical Association by Dr J. B. Dawson in the Museum lecture room last evening. In the unavoidable absence of the president of the association (Mr W. J. Morrell) the chair was occupied by Professor Lawson. * “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 thig paper,” said Dr Dawsou. “ 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 peoples were born, lived, loved, fought, and died, establishing civilisations of 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 ho 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 totem. Misfortunes, especially those of illness or disease, were attributed to the malevolent influences of spirits, who must be placated or intimidated with sacrificial or noisy ceremony. Quickly there followed an inanimate representation of his code 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 kindly fertile valley .of the Nile,” said the lecturer, “neolithic man first raised himself above bie neighbours and initiated the civilisation of the Mediterranean basin that was to dominate the world for 4000 years. Professor Elliot Smith suggests that the discovery of copper in Egypt * forged the instrument that raised civilisation out of the slough of the Stone Age.’ Both in Egypt and in the Sumerian civilisation of Mesopotamia the primitive sciences were profoundly intermingled and vitiated by witchcraft and magic, the grip of tlip priestly prerogative wag 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 philosophy of Hippocrates and Aristotle nourished the infant sciences to a lusty childhood. The glories of the cultural life of Greece survived the downfall of the nation and leavene'd the classical world from the Indus Valley to the Western Mediterranean. “After the death of Alexander, the dynasties founded by, his warring captains, such as Seleucis 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 proceeding, and cultural development preserved the erudition of the golden age of Hellenic art and science. After Greece came the dominance of Rome, but 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 /r°m the hands of a few enlightened slaves by (he 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 aud speculation became overlain by a more 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 carae from the hands of the marauding tribes of Northern Europe and Asia. After the sack of Rome, civilisation was overwhelmed by a darkness that lasted for 1000 years, years during which men stood at bay, sword in hand, to defend their lives, their women, and granaries. Scientific pursuits aud alruistic endeavo ir were impossible for hunted men. This 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 measure of personal and national security permitted men again to consider the problems 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 this 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 in the south of Italy, in some measure a backwater out of the course of invasion and race migration, where a valuable school of medicine and of science flourished for several centuries. This Salernitan school became, by its geographical position, the, meeting place or Norman, Lombard, and Saracen, its tnlingual students, 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 us no idea of the erudition, wisdom, and wealth or 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*con<juorlug warrior race which made itself master oi 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 tne sciences that was required .to complete their greatness. It is a mistake to im- , agine 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 his own ideas on to the best that he found in hie own domains. In their victorious sweep across Asia Minor to the walls of Constantinople the Arabs came into. close contact with Grecian civilisation m tne old colonial settlements of Alexander and Seleucis, wherein much of the culture oi Athens remained unimpaired. “ Not only was this so among the depceuclants of the Gveek colonists, but toe Syriac subjects of the country bad adopted much from their former conquerors, and bad translated uiucli licl* lenic literature into Syriac. In the early days of Arabic predominance all science anil speculative philosophy was thought to be at variance with the true teaching of the Korau. but as the settled dynasties of Caliphates were established the monarchs 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 Homan Empire and into Arabic under the Mohammedan Caliphates, gave rise to an Arabic: scientific literature much more advanced than any produced in the nest 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 a«S 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 ad. For 800 years the Moslem kingdoms of Spain nourished and enlarged all that was best of the erudition of Greece. They produced many physicains 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 Fisa, Montpellier, and Louvain owed much ot their literature, thus obtained, to the Arabian schools of medicine and of science. The Canon of Medicne of Avicenna, a Moslem subject of Bokhara, was the standard text book in the medical schools of Europe until 1650 A.D. 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 mediaeval stagnation to the increasing volume of sound scholarship and true science that adorned the Renaissance.” , An enthusiastic vote of thanks was passed to Dr Dawson for bis interesting address.