Part 24

John Uri was a Hungarian who had studied Oriental literature under Schultens at Leyden, and was recommended to Archbishop Secker for the purpose of cataloguing the Bodleian Oriental MSS., by Sir Joseph Yorke, then ambassador in the Netherlands.[372] Many years were occupied in the preparation of the work, which appears to have commenced in 1766 and was not completed till 1787. In spite of the length of time which Uri occupied in his task, his successor, Pusey, found sufficient errors in it to fill sixty closely printed pages. In his preface to the second volume of the Catalogue, issued in 1835,[373] Pusey complains ‘Urius vero MSS. haud raro negligenter exscripsit’, and says that on re-examination of Uri’s work he discovered, ‘besides the errors which Uri himself would have admitted, that nearly all the purchasers of these books, Pocock alone excepted, had had spurious works foisted on them by wily Orientals. He therefore looked through all the books which Uri had enumerated, excepting the more common ones, to see if they corresponded to their titles or not. By doing this he discovered various irregularities. In some cases the titles had been covered over with paper or obliterated with ink, or practically erased with a knife. In others, by slight changes in the authors’ names, more famous people were indicated as responsible for the works. Lastly, by changing the pagination in some of the volumes fragments were represented as complete works, and a few pages of one work were even occasionally sewn on at the beginning of another.’[374]

Uri’s errors will be the more readily condoned when it is remembered that he did not specialize on the Arabic MSS. alone, and that his work seeks to catalogue, _for the first time_, a two hundred years’ accumulation of Oriental MSS., including Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Aethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Coptic writings. Nevertheless, Uri’s entry with reference to the present MS. deserves some of Pusey’s criticism. The MS. has three parts, each written in a different hand, the first and most important part being the supposed _Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_, which covers folios 2-87. The second part is a fragment of some as yet unidentified medical work (folios 88-115); and the third, consisting of the first and last folios, gives us an introduction and an end piece to the first part.

The alleged author and translator are named on the first page:

هذا كتاب موسى ابن ميمون الفه للعموم قاطبا وقد نقله التميمي الشيخ سليمان الحبشى المكنا بابن حبيش في مملكة القدس الشريغة تم

‘This is the book of Mûsa ibn Maimûn which he put together as a compilation for general use. Al Tamimi, the sheikh Sulaiman the Abyssinian, known as Ibn Ḥubaish,[375] translated it in the noble city of Jerusalem. Finis.’

On the next page there is an introduction to the book which commences:

بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم قال موسى ابن ميمون القرطبى الاسرايلي الخ

‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. So says Mûsa ibn Maimûn, the Cordovan, the Israelite,’ &c.

The whole of the passage is an extract from chapter vi of the Aphorisms of Maimonides, adapted as a kind of introduction, and runs as follows:

قد علمت في قولي هذا في قوة النفسيه والقوة الحيوانيه والقوة الطبيعيه ولنسم الان في هذا الاصطلاح جميع افعال البدنيه للانسان قول ان اشرف الافعال التنفس وبعده النبط والاحساس واشرف الاحواس البصر ثم السمع وبعده الاحساس شهوة الطعام والشراب وبعد ذلك الكلام وبعد ذلك التمييز اعني الذي بها التفل‭(_sic_)‬ والفكر وبعد ذلك الحلافه لساير الاعضاء علي المعتادة وهذه الرتبة في شرف انما هي بحسب ضرورية الحيوة او صالحية فتعلم ان الطبيعة اسم مشترك يقال علي معنى كثيرة كالقوة المدبرة‭ (_sic_)‬الحيوان ايضا طبيعية وما هو اشرف وتمسكت للاشرف في الاشراف وهذه الاسباب الذي قد رايناها ورتبناها وهو الابتداء في النزلات الزكاميه من الراس

_Trans._ ‘I teach in this discourse of mine concerning the animal power, the vital power, and the natural power, but we will here call all man’s bodily functions by one name. There is a saying that the noblest of the functions is breathing, next the pulse, and lastly the senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight, which is followed by hearing. Following on the senses is the appetite for food and drink, after it being speech and then the mind; I mean that which contains the reason and the intellect. Next comes the [?] allocation of [the various powers to] the other parts of the body according to the customary manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only according to the requirements of life or [?] health.

‘You will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal term which can be used in many meanings. [One of these meanings,] for example, is “the motive power of animals”. So, too, is “natural”.

[??...] ‘and that which is nobler. And you will retain the noblest of the noble [functions]. And these causes which we have noticed we have set down in their order; and the beginning is concerning catarrhal discharges from the head.’

Compare with this the real text of Maimonides:[376]

קד עלמת קול אלאטבא קוי׳ נפסאניה וקוי׳ חיואניה וקוי׳ טביעיה.‏‎ ולנפס אנא אלאן פי הדה אלאצטלאח גמיע אפעאל בדן אלאנסאן אלאפעאל אלבדניה [ואשרף אלאפעאל אלתנפש ובעדה אלנבט[377]] ובעדה אל אחסאס.‏‎ ואשרף אלחואס אלבצר. תם אלסמע ובעד אלאחסאס שהוה אלטעאם ואלשראב. ובעד דאלך אלכלאם. ובעד דאלך אלתמייז. אעני בה אלתכייל ואלפכר ובעד דאלך חדכה סאיר אלאעצא עלי מעתאדהא והדה אלרטבה‪(sic)[378]‬ פי אלשרף אנמא הי בחסב צרוריה אלחיאה או צלאחיה אסתמראהא״ ובעד הדה אלמקדמה פלתעלם אן אלטביעה אסם משתרך יקאל עלי מעאני כתירת ומן גמלה תלך אלמעאני אלקוה אלמדברה לבדן אלחיואן פאנהא אלאטבא יסמונהא איצי טביעה והדב אלקוה הי איצי . . . . . .‏‎ פאן גלבת ען דלך בדלת מא הוא אשרף ותמסכת באלשרף פאלאשרף .ובחסב הדה אלתרתיב יעלם אלמרץ אלח׳

‘Thou knowest the opinion of the physicians [concerning] animal power, vital power, and natural power. But it is my intention here to call all the functions of man’s body by the one name of “bodily functions”. [The noblest of the functions is breathing, next the pulse,[377]] and lastly the senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight, which is followed by hearing. Following on the senses is the appetite for food and drink, after it being speech and then the mind, by which I mean the thoughts and the intellect. Next comes the motion of the other parts of the body according to their customary manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only according to the requirements of life or the health of its faculties.

‘From this preface you will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal term which can be used in many meanings. One of these meanings [for example] is “the motive power in the bodies of animals” which the physicians call “nature” too.... And if you discover this, you will exchange that which is nobler and retain that which is noblest. By means of this process of arrangement, a disease can be recognized,’ &c.

This introduction was added when the folios stood in a state of disorder different from their present one. The catchword at the bottom of the page [وهذا = and this] points forward to the title already mentioned,[379] which appears on folio thirty-nine of the present arrangement. The text below this title is part of the chapter on discharges and catarrh, so that the folio once followed immediately on the introduction, being then, too, out of its proper place.

The last page, written in the same hand as the introduction, bears a piece of some unidentified work and a colophon which reads:

وقد تم هذا الكتاب الشريف تاليف موسى ابن ميمون القرطبى الاسرايلى رحمه الله مما الف وجرب هذا الكتاب المبارك وعدد فصوله امراض البدن مما رتبه على اوضاعه (_sic_)مائة وست فصول للجميع سبع مالة وخمسة وستين (_sic_)٦٥٢٧ تم الكتاب فى سنة

‘This noble book is finished; the composition of Mûsa ibn Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite, to whom God be gracious. This blessed book is part of that which he composed and tested. The number of its chapters is 106, dealing with all the diseases of the body, which he arranged in their proper order.

‘The book was completed in the year 765.’[380]

The number 106, which according to the colophon is the number of chapters in the book, is really the number of titles in the MS. written in large hand. Fragments of many chapters whose titles are lost still remain in it however, while many of the chapters that have preserved their titles are no longer complete.

Again it may be pointed out that all the known medical works of Maimonides were written in Arabic and therefore did not need to be translated into that language as the Bodleian MS. claims to have been. The spurious title-page thus further betrays itself by saying that this work was translated from _Hebrew_.

Finally, the identification of the real contents of the Paris MS. disposes of the last foundation of the idea that Maimonides wrote any compendium of medicine known as ‫كتاب الاسباب والعلامات‬ (_Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_), and clears up the confusion caused by the faulty entries in the Paris and Bodleian catalogues.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND LOGICAL PROOF

By F. C. S. Schiller

§ 1. Among the obstacles to scientific progress a high place must certainly be assigned to the analysis of scientific procedure which Logic has provided. This analysis has not only been inadequate in itself, but has set itself a mistaken aim. It has not tried to describe the methods by which the sciences have actually advanced, and to extract from their experience the logical rules which might be used to regulate scientific progress, but has treated scientific discoveries almost entirely as illustrations of a preconceived ideal of proof, and so has freely rearranged the actual procedure in accordance with its prejudices. For the order of discovery there has been substituted an order of ‘proof’, and this substitution has been justified by the assumption that if discovery had taken the ideally best course, it would have coincided with the process of proof. It followed, of course, that the same logic would do for both, and that this logic was already in existence.

The damage thus inflicted upon Science was twofold. Not only were the logicians given a plausible excuse for persisting in their profound misapprehension of scientific inquiry and rendered incapable of giving any help or guidance in the solution of actual problems, but, what was much worse, the scientists themselves were misled about the nature of their operations.

The precise value of the service which a correct logical analysis of its procedure might have rendered to Science is perhaps open to dispute, though it must surely be beneficial to operate consciously, and with a full understanding of their nature, the methods which have been hit upon empirically; but even if logicians have commonly been too unfamiliar with the details of scientific problems to offer much practical advice, it would be difficult to overrate the mischiefs which must have resulted from referring scientists to an incorrect analysis of their actual procedures. For the attempt to justify by such a false ideal what they had actually done was bound to divert their attention from the methods that were actually effective and fruitful to others which were impracticable and sterile, to waste energy upon false aims and impossible ideals, and so to hamper scientists fatally in the exercise of their scientific rights and powers.

Hence it is not too much to say that the more deference men of science have paid to Logic, the worse it has been for the scientific value of their reasoning, while the less they have troubled to know about the theory of Science, the better it has been for their practice.

Fortunately for the world, however, the great men of science have usually been kept in salutary ignorance of the logical tradition and left to their own devices, by the accident that the historical organization of academic studies nearly everywhere confined ‘logic’ to the literary curriculum. Nevertheless, the moral of this situation is not that it is right for science to neglect logic and for logic to despise science, but that science should appeal from logic as it is to logic as it ought to be, and should insist on being provided with a _reformed_ logic. For surely if a scientific education is to be more than a narrow and technical specialty, and is to exert a ‘liberalizing’ and broadening effect on the mind, it _ought_ to include a study of scientific method in its generality and a certain understanding of the intellectual instruments by which all others are operated and constructed.

The whole evidence for these contentions it will not, of course, be possible to marshal within the limits of this essay, but the systematic criticism to which the whole traditional logic has been subjected in my _Formal Logic_[381] may perhaps absolve me from the duty of substantiating them exhaustively. It may suffice to indicate the extent of the scientific grievance against ‘logic’ by drawing up a list of problems in the logic of science which the traditional logic has misconceived, and then to select for fuller treatment a palmary example of the radical discrepancy between the two.

The traditional logic may be convicted of having gravely misrepresented, (1) the value of classification and the formation of classes, scientific processes of which the real logic was only revealed by the Darwinian theory, (2) the function of definition, (3) the importance of analogy, (4) of hypothesis and (5) of fictions, (6) the incomplete dependence of scientific results on the ‘principles’ by which they are (apparently) obtained, (7) the formation of scientific ‘law’ and its relation to its ‘cases’, (8) the nature of causal analysis. Other important features of scientific procedure cannot be said to have been recognized at all, e.g. (9) the problem of determining what is _relevant_ to an inquiry and what practically must be, and safely may be, excluded, (10) the methods and justification of _selection_, (11) the essentially _experimental_ nature of all thought and consequent inevitableness of _risk_, (12) the necessity of so conceiving ‘truth’ and ‘error’ that it is possible to _discriminate_ between them, and (13) the need for an inquiry into _meaning_ and into the conditions of its communication.

I

§ 2. The most instructive, however, of the discrepancies between ‘logic’ and scientific procedure will appear if we compare the logical notion of _proof_ with the scientific process of _discovery_, and examine how far it can afford any means of regulating, stimulating, or even apprehending the latter. We shall find that the logical theory of ‘proof’ has no bearing on the scientific process of discovery, is not related to what the sciences call proof, and can only have a paralysing influence on any scientific activities which try to model themselves upon it. On the other hand, the study of the process of discovery will point to an important correction in the notion of logic.

§ 3. The scientific uselessness of the traditional logic should not, however, excite surprise. For what reason was there to expect that the theory of proof should turn out to be adequate, or even relevant, to scientific procedure? It had sprung from a totally different interest, proceeded on different assumptions, and aimed at different ends. It did not spring from interest in the exploration of nature, and did not aim at its prediction and control. Nor did it presuppose an incomplete system of knowledge which it was desired to extend and improve. It originated in a very special context, from the social need of regulating the practice of dialectical debate in the Greek schools, assemblies, and law-courts. It was necessary to draw up rules for determining which side had won, and which of the points that had been scored were good.

These were the aims Greek logic set itself, and successfully achieved. But the impress of this origin remains stamped all over it, and the accounts given of logical proof ever since have retained essential features of Greek dialectics.

Thus it was assumed that science could start from principles, as indisputable as are the current meanings of words in a dialectical debate, and the end of the whole theory of proof was always conceived as being to secure the conviction (ἔλεγχος) of one party to a dispute, who was to be definitely crushed by the triumphant cogency of a syllogistic demonstration, while the more real and fruitful analogy between scientific inquiry and debate, viz. that _there is always another side_, to which also it is well to listen, was unfortunately obscured by Aristotle’s discovery of the syllogistic form and its show of conclusiveness. But for the purpose of apprehending scientific procedure the syllogism is a snare: by putting scientific reasoning into syllogisms, the difference between the true and the false views is made to appear qualitative and absolute, instead of being a quantitative question of more or less of scientific value. Thus dogmatism is fostered at the expense of progressiveness, and the mistake is committed of approaching the discovery of truth in a party spirit. Hence its dialectical origin has become _fons et origo malorum_ for logic.

§ 4. It is true that this mistake is very old, and has grown deeply into the fabric of logic. For Aristotle had no sooner worked out the classic formulation of the rules of dialectical proof than he proceeded to extend their scope by applying them to the theory of science, in the _Posterior Analytics_. His instinct in so doing was sound enough; for there is no better verification of a theory than its capacity to bear extension to analogous cases. And of course if this extension had been successful, it would have supported the belief that the theory of discovery could profitably be amalgamated with that of proof.

Unfortunately, however, the verification only seemed to be successful. Aristotle chose to exemplify his theory of scientific proof from the mathematical sciences. His choice was natural enough, because they were the only sciences which had reached any considerable development in his day, and they had, moreover, an apparent necessity and universality and a fascinating appearance of exactness. But he had unwittingly chosen the most difficult and deceptive exemplification of scientific procedure. Because the mathematical sciences were in a relatively advanced condition they seemed to lend themselves to his design. He could there find terms whose meaning, and principles whose truth, was no longer in dispute. They could in consequence be argued from with as much assurance as debaters could assume the recognized meanings of words. And the fact that results seemed to follow from mathematical definitions and premisses which were not merely verbal, shed a delusive glory on the forms of dialectical proof by which they had been reached. Hence it easily escaped notice that the logical superiority of mathematics was an achievement, not a datum. Just because the mathematical sciences were very ancient, their origins had been forgotten, and with them the tentative gropings which had first selected, and subsequently confirmed, their principles. They had become immediately certain and ‘self-evident’, and no one was disposed to dispute them. On this psychological fact the whole theory of logical proof was erected.

Again, it was natural to suppose that the true nature of scientific knowing must be revealed in its most perfect specimens: no one stopped to reflect that even so the real difficulties of making a science are more keenly felt and more easily seen in the nascent stage than in one which has victoriously overcome them, and has rewritten its history in the assurance of its prosperous issue.

Lastly, the subtle ambiguity which pervades all mathematical reasoning, according as its terms are taken as _pure_ or as applied, was overlooked entirely--with the disastrous result that the universality, certainty, and exactness pertaining (hypothetically) to the ideal creations of ‘pure’ mathematics were erroneously transferred to their ‘applied’ counterparts. To this day logicians are found to argue that real space is homogeneous because it is convenient in Euclidean geometry to abstract from the multitudinous deformations to which bodies moving through it are subjected, and to leave them to be treated by physics;[382] nor are they aware of any lack of ‘exactness’ and discrimination when they identify the ideal triangle with the figures they draw on the blackboard.

§ 5. After its apparent success in analysing mathematical procedure there was no more disputing the supremacy of the theory of ‘proof’. The facts that its field of application was soon found to be much narrower than that of science, and that it failed egregiously to apply to the procedures of the (openly) empirical sciences, and _a fortiori_ could not justify them, if they were noticed at all, were held merely to show that these sciences stood on a low level of thought, which from the loftier standpoint of logic could be contemplated only with contempt; if they required help and got none, so much the worse for them. Accordingly the whole theory of science was so interpreted, and the whole of logic was so constructed, as to lead up to the ideal of demonstrative science, which in its turn rested on a false analogy which assimilated it to the dialectics of ‘proof’. Does not this mistake go far to account for the neglect of experience and the unprogressiveness of science for nearly 2,000 years after Aristotle?

§ 6. Yet the deplorable consequences of this error should not render us unjust. The influence of Aristotelian logic on the theory of science was natural, and in a sense deserved. For Aristotelian logic is perhaps the mightiest discovery any man has achieved single-handed. Its might is sufficiently attested by the length of its reign. Euclidean geometry alone is comparable with it, and Euclid owed far more to his predecessors than Aristotle. Moreover, the Aristotelian logic may be said to have achieved its purpose. It was able to regulate dialectical discussion. The syllogism did determine whether a disputant had proved his case, and for any one who had accepted its assumptions its decision was final, while even its severest critics had to admit that it was an indisputable fact, the interpretation of which was a real problem.

Unfortunately, there is not yet any agreement among logicians about the solution of this problem. Aristotle’s own analysis did not go back far enough: he stopped short at the _Dictum de Omni_ and the reduction of syllogisms in the second and third figures to the first. He did not penetrate to the ultimate assumptions which were implied in the dialectical purpose and social function of the syllogism. But the truth is that syllogistic reasoning presupposes quite a number of conventions which Aristotle did not state, and which can hardly be said to have been adequately recognized since.