The Scientific Achievement of the Middle Ages by Richard C. DalesReview by: Richard HarperIsis, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 421-422Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/228866 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 66 * 3 * 233 (1975) 421

gives his own re-calculations of these (p. 68) but does not explain how he reached his slightly different results. Neither does he discuss the implications of knowledge of the synodic period of Mercury, difficult as it is to observe the planet and erratic as its apparent movements are.

Muller's study is not so much a synthesis as a preliminary collection of interesting information which will be necessary for a synthesis if it ever becomes possible to write one. Muller calls for fuller cooperation between astronomers and archaeologists in studying such features as temple align- ments. Certainly much more study will be needed before we can even sketch precari- ously the development of astronomical knowledge among the Andean peoples.

DAVID H. KELLEY Department of Archaeology

University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada

* MIDDLE AGES

Richard C. Dales. The Scientific Achievement of the Middle Ages. ix + 182 pp., 8 figs., bibl. essay. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973. $3.45 (paper).

Richard C. Dales has made available to those who teach medieval history or surveys of the history of science a very useful volume of readings and interpretative essays that illustrates typical problems which men of the Middle Ages wrestled with and the solutions they offered. An introductory essay by Edward Peters en- titled "Science and the Culture of Early Europe" admirably sketches the back- ground of the general intellectual bur- geoning of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies of which scientific investigation was a part. In addition, he calls attention to the difficulties, both technical and idea- tional, that hampered the development of a scientific mentality: "there were epis- temological difficulties as well. The very modern habit of conceptualizing bodies of knowledge as distinctive in methodology, vocabulary, and appropriateness for cer- tain situations, that permits modern

thinkers to speak of 'scientific method' and even 'science' itself, is a relatively recent human acquisition" (p. 7). This reminder is especially important if science is to be considered as a part of the culture that produced it and not as something sub specie aeternitatis. He also makes the significant point that few of the men of science were exclusively that, for the greater part of them had public careers; "the scientific professions did not exist" (p. 23).

The readings are intended to put before the modern student "enough of the key works of medieval science that he can make a reasonable judgment concerning it" (p. vi). The works include inter alia selections from Grosseteste's The Impressions of the Elements and The Heat of the Sun, as well as his An Inquiry into the Causes of the Tides; selections from Bradwardine's Tractatus de proportionibus; Buridan's Questions on the Heavens and the World; and Oresme's On the Book of the Heavens and the World of Aristotle. The texts and translations are either drawn from the standard modern editions or, in most cases, made by the author. Although well done, there are many passages where the average student will find the language obscure and confus- ing and will wish for more editorial expla- nation. Dales may have felt-and probably rightly-that additions of this sort would have resulted in a longer and thereby more expensive book and that such explanations were better left to the instructor in the classroom.

The works presented are from those areas of medieval science in which the results were, from the modern point of view, most respectable. The editor has "omitted those areas of scientific activity, such as medicine and biology, in which the medieval achievement was less notable" (p. 5). The treatises from which excerpts were taken are also almost exclusively theoretical in nature. It would have added to the student's appreciation of the complex task of medieval theoretical science if some of the works dealing with the development of instruments, mechanical or mathemat- ical, had also been included. A knowledge of a few examples of the astronomical treatises that accepted, worked with, and refined the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic con- struct would give him a clearer idea of the

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422 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 66 * 3 * 233 (1975)

mundane considerations of much of medi- eval astronomy. Chapter 8 does, however, provide some insight into the practical concerns of medieval scientific inquiry; "The Fringes of Science" deals with astrol- ogy, alchemy, and magic.

A final essay rehearses the controversy about the relationship between medieval and modern science, but no definite answer to the problem is provided. Dales is unable to join A. C. Crombie in the fullness of his praise, nor can he accept the con- demnation of Alexandre Koyre. He main- tains that "a more fruitful approach might be to stop arguing about the matter of continuity and try to understand rather what basic mutation occurred in the Euro- pean world view between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries" (p. 175), and in so maintaining, he underlines that science with its fundamental tenets and subsumptions does not exist without cross reference to its age.

The book concludes with a bibliographi- cal essay that does not pretend to be ex- haustive, but that will, it is hoped, lead students to further studies in medieval science. Despite its limited scope, the book deserves to be placed alongside the anthol- ogies of medieval philosophy and literature in order that the map of medieval thought may be drawn in greater detail.

RICHARD HARPER Department of History

University of Wyoming Laramie, Wyoming 82070

Lorenzo Minio-Paluello. Opuscula: The Latin Aristotle. xii + 590 pp. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972. Dfl. 96.

Charles H. Lohr. "Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries," Traditio, 1967, 23:313- 413; 1968, 24:149-245; 1970, 26:135-216; 1971, 27:251-351; 1972, 28:281-396; 1973, 29:93-197; 1974, 30:119-144; "Me- dieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries, Ad- denda et corrigenda," Bulletin de Philosophie M&l'ievale 1972, 14:116-126.

A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions, 1501- 1600. With an Introduction and indexes by F. Edward Cranz (BiblioEheca Biblio- graphica Aureliana, Vol. 38.) xii + 188 pp.

Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1971. DM 48.

Recently it has become increasingly obvi- ous that Aristotelianism as a cultural influ- ence lasted much longer than was pre- viously realized. William Harvey's links with this tradition now seem firmly established, and, if Galileo's are more questionable, the attention of various scholars has been drawn to his relations to the Peripatetic tradition of his time. Therefore, it is most pleasant to note that several fundamental works dealing with medieval and Renais- sance Aristotelianism have appeared within the past few years. The three reviewed here are all basic research tools for a more complete understanding of the Aristotelian phenomenon in the West and should serve to encourage others to look at various details in a more exhaustive way.

One of the most assiduous and able workers on the history of Aristotelianism has been Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, who has for more than thirty years devoted himself to a study of the Latin tradition of Aristote- lianism during the Middle Ages. Until a year or so ago he was the director of the Aristoteles Latinus project. Numerous vol- umes of critical texts of the Latin transla- tions of Aristotle have been published dur- ing the past twenty years, and many more are actively being prepared. When the entire series is completed we shall have an immensely useful working tool for further research on medieval intellectual history.

The volume titled Opuscula collects thirty-one of Minio-Paluello's articles pro- duced as a sort of by-product of his work on the Aristoteles Latinus. In them we see a master philologist and historian of texts at work, and his findings show that startling new information is still to be uncovered in what might appear to be a well-worked- over field. One of the most important results to come from this research is the discovery that the translation of the Catego- ries commonly ascribed to Boethius was not by him at all but dates only from the tenth century. Moreover, an independent translation, hitherto unknown, is identified as that of Boethius.

Another valuable service provided by Minio-Paluello has been his painstaking collation of various Latin translations with

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