Medieval Biology. The Dark Ages

In the latter days of the Roman Empire, Christianity grew to be the dominant religion. When the Empire (or its western regions) was buried under the influx of the Germanic tribes, these, too, were converted to Christianity. Christianity did not kill Greek science, for that had flickered to near-extinction while Christianity was still but an obscure sect, and, in fact, had showed signs of serious sickness well before the birth of Christ.

Nevertheless, the dominance of Christianity worked against the revival of science for many centuries. The Christian viewpoint was quite opposed to that of the Ionian philosophers. To the Christian mind, the important world was not that of the senses, but the "City of God" which could be reached only by revelation and to which the Bible and the writings of the Church fathers and the inspiration of the Church itself were the only sure guides.

The belief in the existence of a natural law that was unchanging and unchangeable gave way to the belief in a world constantly subject to the miraculous interposition of God on behalf of His saints. In fact, it was even felt by some that the study of the things of the world was a devilish device designed to distract the Christian from the proper attention to things of the spirit. Science, from that standpoint, became a thing of evil.

Naturally, this was not the universal view and the light of science maintained a feeble glow amid the shadow of the so-called "Dark Ages." An occasional scholar struggled to keep worldly knowledge alive. For instance, the Englishman, Bede (673-735), preserved what he could of the ancients. Since, however, this consisted largely of scraps of Pliny, what he preserved was not very advanced.

Perhaps, in fact, the light might have faded out after all, had it not been for the Arabs. The Arabs adopted Islam, a religion even newer than Christianity, and preached by Mohammed in the seventh century. They burst out of their arid peninsula at once and flooded over southwestem Asia and northern Africa. By 730, a century after Mohammed, the men of Islam (Moslems) stood at the edge of Constantinople on the east and at the edge of France on the west.

Militarily and culturally, they seemed a dreadful scourge and danger to Christian Europe, but intellectually, they proved, in the long run, to be a boon. Like the Romans, the Arabs were not themselves great scientific originators. Nevertheless, they discovered the work of men such as

Aristotle and Galen, translated them into Arabic, preserved them, studied them, and wrote commentaries on them. The most important of the Moslem biologists was the Persian physician, abu-Ali al-Husayn ibn-Slna, commonly known by the Latinized version of the last part of his name, Avicenna (980-1037). Avicenna wrote numerous books based on the medical theories of Hippocrates and on the collected material in Celsus' books.

About that time, however, the tide had turned, at least in western Europe. Christian armies had reconquered Sicily which, for a couple of centuries, had been controlled by the Moslems, and were reconquering Spain. Toward the end of the eleventh century, west European armies began to invade the Near East in what are called the Crusades.

Contacts with the Moslems helped make Europeans aware of the fact that the enemy culture was not merely a thing of the devil but that, in some respects, it was more advanced and sophisticated than their own way of life at home. European scholars began to seek after Moslem learning, and projects to translate Arabic books on science flourished. Working in newly reconquered Spain, where the help of Moslem scholars could be counted on, the Italian scholar, Gerard of Cremona (1114-87), translated the works of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as some of the works of Aristotle, into Latin.

A German scholar, Albertus Magnus (1206-80), was one of those who fell in love with the rediscovered Aristotle. His teachings and writings were almost entirely Aristotelian and he helped lay once more a foundation of Greek science on which, at last, more could be built.

One of Albertus' pupils was the Italian scholar, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-74). He labored to harmonize Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian faith and, by and large, succeeded. Aquinas was a rationalist in that he felt that the reasoning mind was God-created, as was the rest of the universe, and that by true reasoning man could not arrive at a conclusion that was at odds with Christian teaching. Reason was therefore not evil or harmful. The stage was thus set for a renewal of rationalism.