Method and results : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Thomas Henry Huxley
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Method and results : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/450 page 44
    n foundations of physical science. But, without entering into the discussion of that large question, it is certain that the labours of these early workers in the field of natural knowledefe were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the super- natural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages, And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks. Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time before they saw as much as their forerunners had done. The first serious attempts to carry further the unfinished work of Archimedes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy, of Aristotle and of Galen, naturally enough arose among the astronomers and the physicians. For the imperious necessity of seek- ing some remedy for the physical ills of life had insured the preservation of more or less of the wisdom of Hippocrates and his successors; and, by a happy conjunction of circumstances, the Jewish and the Arabian physicians and philo-
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