• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1086 0

August Kekulé, the discoverer of the benzene ring which typifies the mechanism or structure by which groups of atoms join to form molecules that can be added to other molecules, wrote of gazing into the fire and seeing in the flames a ring of atoms like a serpent eating its own tail. Newton is supposed to have had his revelation when watching an apple fall to earth. Archimedes, so the story goes, leapt out of his bath crying ‘Eureka!’as he realised the meaning of displacement. Gutenberg described the idea of the printing press as ‘coming like a ray of light’. Wallace came to theory of evolution in a ‘delirium’. Each of them experienced the flash of insight that comes at the moment of discovery.

This act of mystical significance in which man uncovers yet another secret of nature is at the very heart of science. Through discovery man has broadened and deepened his control over the elements, explored the far reaches of the solar system, laid bare the forces holding together the building-blocks of existence. With each discovery the condition of the human race has changed in some way for the better, as new understanding has brought more enlightened modes of thought and action, and new techniques have enhanced the material quality of life.

Each step forward has been characterised by an addition or refinement to the body of knowledge which has changed the view of society regarding the universe as a whole. As the knowledge changed, so did the view.

Roger Bacon’s thirteen th-century drawing of the eye.

An early exercise in perspective by Uccello.

The caravel in which Columbus sailed to the New World.

With the arrival in northern Europe in the twelfth century of the Greek and Arab sciences and the logical system of thought contained in the writings of Aristotle, saved from loss in the Muslim texts, the mould in which life had been cast for at least seven hundred years broke. Before the texts arrived man’s view of life and the universe was unquestioning, mystical, passive. Nature was transient, full of decay, ephemeral, not worth investigation. The truth lay not in the world around, which decomposed, but in the sky, where the stars which wheeled in eternal perfection were the divine plan written in light. If man looked for inspiration at all he looked backwards, to the past, to the work of giants. The new Arab knowledge changed all this.

Whereas with St Augustine man had said, ‘Credo ut intelligam’ (I come to understanding only through belief), he now began to say, ‘Intelligo ut credam’ (belief can come only through understanding). New skills in the logical analysis of legal texts led to a rational, scholastic system of thought which subjected nature to examination.

The new, logical approach encouraged empiricism. Man’s individual experience of the world was now considered valuable. As the questioning grew, stimulated by the flood of information arriving from the Arab world, knowledge became institutionalised with the establishment of the European universities, where students were taught to think investigatively. The first tentative steps towards science were taken by Theodoric of Freiburg and Roger Bacon. Man had become a rational thinker, confident and above all forward-looking.

A century later another Arab was to change Europe again when his theories on optics were rediscovered. Al Hazen’s views, disseminated in Florence by Toscanelli, brought perspective geometry to the humanist thinkers of the early Renaissance, thus providing them with the means of escape from Aristotle. Aristotle’s universe of concentric crystal spheres, hierarchical in nature, was filled with objects each of which was unique, created individually by God. The only significant characteristic of each object was its ‘essence’, the unique nature of the object that provided its particular traits. All objects existed only in relation to the centre of the universe, so their representation in art had no perspective. Each was assigned a certain theological importance and was depicted accordingly. Saints were big; people were small. Each object existed