The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [18]
One of the most prolific groups of translators worked under Domingo Gonzales, Archdeacon of Seville, who headed a group of Christians working with a Toledan Jewish scholar called Ibn Da’ud. The translators dealt with every subject known to the Arabs at the time, almost all of the knowledge culled from Greek sources and new to Latin Europe. The subjects covered by the texts included medicine, astrology, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation and history.
This mass of knowledge would have proved critical for the Latins had it arrived alone. What caused the intellectual bombshell to explode, however, was the philosophy that came with it. This included Aristotle’s system of nature and the logic of argument. Much of the material translated was Arab in origin. By far the most numerous, though, were the translations made of Arab versions of Greek scientific work, with commentaries that greatly aided the understanding of these advanced texts. The first of them was the all-encompassing Shifa of the Persian doctor Avicenna (Ibn Sina), written in the early years of the eleventh century.
Avicenna’s work was the first great encyclopedia of philosophy to be written, and in presenting the views of Aristotle he shocked and excited the West by giving religion and philosophy equal status as systems for explaining the cosmos. This equality of status was contrary to the teaching of Christian theology. Through Avicenna and other commentators the West learned from Aristotle the seemingly magic power of argument by syllogism, the use of which wouldavoiderroneous andillogical conclusion.Syllogisms were dialectical, structured in three parts: a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion. There were four categories of statement which could be made by a syllogism: a universal, positive statement; a universal, negative statement; a particular, positive statement; and a particular, negative statement. Thus:
All men are mortal. I am a man. I am mortal.
No dogs are blind. All Alsatians are dogs. No Alsatians are blind.
All men are rational. Some animals are men. Some animals are rational.
No Italians are black. Some men are Italians. Some men are not black.
The new, analytical view of the world was brought to Latin Europe through Greek illustrations reproduced by Arab commentators. This one is from a treatise on medicinal herbs originating in Alexandrine Greece.
The purpose of the syllogism was to use two known facts to produce a third, previously unknown fact. This technique greatly aided investigation of the natural world because it produced conclusions which were logically necessary even if not themselves directly observable. Thus:
Skin gets wet with perspiration. Moisture escapes from things through holes. Skin has holes.
Reaching these conclusions involved two forms of thought, induction and deduction. Induction took the thinker from the particular to the general: the examination of particular characteristics in similar objects would lead to a new and general conclusion about them. Deduction took two general truths not open to reasonable doubt (such as ‘equal minus equal leaves equal’) which led necessarily to a third, more particular truth, which was also new.
Aristotle’s general system used these techniques to examine nature and the cosmos and to arrive at infallible truths. What was revolutionary about this was Aristotle’s suggestion that nature could be systematised so as to make it amenable to syllogistic analysis.
The new system was a tool which enabled the thinkers of Europe, especially those at Chartres, to do what they had previously only been able to theorise about. The collection of Aristotle’s works on logic became known as the Organon (the tool). In Paris a Breton philosopher called Pierre Abelard was to apply the technique in a way that would shake the