The rise of the experimental method in Oxford : being the ninth Robert Boyle lecture delivered before the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club on May 13, 1902 / by Clifford Allbutt.

  • Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford), 1836-1925.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The rise of the experimental method in Oxford : being the ninth Robert Boyle lecture delivered before the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club on May 13, 1902 / by Clifford Allbutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Method in Oxford. In this age of steam cars, of steam ships, and of steam balloons, the mobility of the European people in the Middle Ages is still marvellous to us. We try to picture to ourselves knights, troubadours, pilgrims, merchants, friars, scholars driven by demons of unrest about an unparcelled world; and of this medley scholars were perhaps the most vagabond. ‘ O curiosi ingegni. Pere- grinate al mondo, cercate tutti i numerosi regni.’ As Petrarch said of them, ‘Agitatione mentis et corporis ignorantiam discussuri,’ they swept in flocks, like birds in their migrations, from school to school; having no country but in the several quarters or ‘ nations ’ where they were gathered together; for the European nations in our sense did not exist. During the five centuries after the Conquest the realms of Italy, Burgundy, France, England, and the Empire were variables as inconstant as their peoples; what we now call a university was then no particular spot on the earth but, like the Ark in the wilderness, moved whithersoever a great teacher, such as Fulbert, Lanfranc, the Anselms, Abelard, or Peter Lombard, unfurled his standard. This mobility was indeed the guarantee of the freedom and the power of learning. Not till the fourteenth century did the ‘ ius ubique docendi ’ come to dependence on charter from pope, king, or bishop; till then the scholar owed no