SOURCE: "Albertus Magnus and the Rise of an Empirical Approach in Medieval Philosophy and Science," in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, edited by David L. Jeffrey, University of Ottawa Press, 1979, pp. 175-85.

[In the following excerpt, Shaw argues that Albert's works were among the first to emphasize experimentation in the biological sciences.]

I

Insofar as it is possible to generalize meaningfully about such things, it is true that at the beginning of the thirteenth century Plato was the establishment philosopher, but at the end of the same century he was not so firmly established. At the end of the century, though Aristotle was not yet recognized as a Christian, he was not completely ostracized from the Church, and he was certainly at home in the Continental universities. This radical change was due, in part, to the efforts of Albertus Magnus.

When Albert began his commentaries on Aristotle (sometime in the 1240s) Aristotle had already been the subject of several ecclesiastical condemnations, not only papal, but also provincial and episcopal. Of course, the logical works of Aristotle were not the subject of the condemnations. The ecclesiastical authorities had long since learned to live with the parts of the Organon which had been known to the early Middle Ages. The Categories especially were used in the early cathedral schools, but the Categories can easily be read—and were so read—in the light of the more favored Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy. One can still read the Categories as a rather analytical elaboration of the Platonic theory of Ideas.

It was this theory of ideas which from the beginning of Christianity had favorably disposed educated pagan converts to Plato. Since they only had a bit of the Platonic corpus they could not know that the theory, especially as interpreted by some Neoplatonists, plays a very small part in Plato's own thought. Nevertheless, some of the most influential Church fathers read Plato, particularly in the Timœus, as promoting a belief in subsistent ideas which the Fathers saw as eternal exemplars of things existing in the mind of God. Accompanying the belief in the reality of these eternal exemplars was the corresponding view that this world was but a shadow of the Real world. Platonism was also compatible with the Fathers' interpretation of Christianity. Thus the eternal χώρᾳ̑ of the Timœus was thought to be the created chaos of Genesis out of which God the Father had made the world. Other dialogues known either completely or in part in the early Middle Ages, such as the Phœdo, Meno, and Alcibiades I, show the influences of Pythagorean mystical beliefs, and were easily appropriated to the Christianity of many early Church Fathers. Doctrines such as the complete separation of soul and body, the definition of man as a soul who uses a body, the need for purification, the eternity of the soul, were associated with Platonic philosophy and made possible the very early baptism of Plato into the faith. As Plato's philosophical views were honored, so his rather meager scientific views came to be accepted by churchmen. The views expounded in the Timœus about the macrocosm and the microcosm, i.e., about the universe and about man, were carefully repeated and finely elaborated upon in the hexameral literature. These treatises or homilies were commentaries on the two accounts of creation found in the Scripture. The scientific education of many people in the early Middle Ages was founded on this hexameral literature, and while the intelligentsia concentrated on many of the physical details, several of the major themes were generally adopted. In addition to the Platonic views already mentioned, another belief that emerges very clearly in the hexameral literature is the belief in the geometrical or mathematical construction of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Though for many this came down to an interest in what we might be tempted to call mystical numerology, for others, such as early astronomers or astrologers, it meant that a paradigm for true science was a kind of geometry of celestial spaces. In this kind of science empirical observations played little if any part. Such non-empirical science was easily compatible with what they knew of Plato and the little Aristotle that they possessed.

When an integral Aristotelian corpus began to be translated in Latin, however, it was seen that many of the major Platonic doctrines were repudiated by Aristotle. When, for example, the biological works were made available in the mid-thirteenth century, the schoolmen were startled to see someone who claimed, as Aristotle does in the Generation of Animals, that "credence must be given to observation rather than to theory, and to theory only insofar as it agrees with what is observed," or that his own earlier astronomy (which was largely an a priori construction) was a "conjecture" (Parts of Animals) and not based on observed facts. Though many of the schoolmen were startled, others were shocked and there began the long series of ecclesiastical condemnations of Aristotle.… This is something pointed out by all the histories of medieval philosophy and science. What is not generally pointed out is that most of the early condemnations, such as those of 1210, 1215, and 1231, were aimed specifically at the books of so-called natural philosophy and that the books of Aristotle with a specifically biological content were sometimes mentioned by name. It is in these books that we find the strongest statements of Aristotle's demand for empirical observations in the natural sciences, as well as the complete absence of any sort of mathematical or deductivist explanations. This is an absence which is especially noticeable when one looks at other—earlier—works of Aristotle as well as the Platonism that they knew. Though these two views, (1) the stress on the need for empirical observations in the biological sciences and (2) the implied rejection of mathematical accounts in biological investigations, were certainly not the sole reason for the many condemnations of Aristotle's works in the natural sciences, these views were inimical to the house-Platonism of the time, and yet constitute an approach which is quite typical of much of the writing of Albert the Great on the natural sciences.

II

Albert's exact date of birth is unknown, but he died in 1280 when he was more than eighty years old. Though there is uncertainty about the date of his birth and his family background, quite a bit is known about his later life and travels, since Albert himself—unlike most other scholastics—records many autobiographical details in his voluminous writings. From his birthplace in a small town on the Danube, Lauingen, between Regensberg and Ulm, he traveled to Padua for his university education. There he studied the usual arts curriculum, as well as medicine. It was not until he was over thirty years old that he joined the Dominican Order and was sent back to his native country to study in the houses of the Order there. This education consisted almost entirely of the study of Scriptures and the more famous commentaries on them. Soon after he completed his own education he became a lector himself and began a long career in his Order as an educator and administrator. Though he spent a considerable amount of the rest of his life in Germany, his duties involved much traveling, almost always on foot. These journeys were the opportunity for many observations which he minutely recorded in one work or another. In 1243 he walked to Paris from Cologne, a distance of over 300 miles, the first of many times. At the University of Paris he took an advanced degree in theology and taught there for a short while. It was here that he first met up with something like an integral Aristotle. For, despite the many prohibitions, the Dominican library at Paris had a comparatively good collection of Aristotelian works. Albert, as he tells us explicitly in the beginning of his commentary on the Physics, decided that he would read and write commentaries on the entire Aristotelian corpus, because he said that it is important to make Aristotle's works "intelligible to the Latins." The entire project took Albert about twenty years and is an amazing achievement. It seems even more amazing when one realizes that the commentaries on Aristotle form only seventeen of the forty volumes in the Cologne critical edition of Albert's own work, that the actual writing had to be squeezed into a very busy schedule, and that there was great opposition to the entire project. There was some temporary opposition from within his own Order, and the early chronicles contain stories of the devil appearing to his fellow Dominicans and warning them of the dangerous project Brother Albert was about. However, the external opposition from the secular clergy and the Franciscans proved more continuous. Albert was aware of the opposition to his project and apparently thought that those opposed to it should at least read his work before they condemned it. If they did not do that much, he cared little for their opinions.

The commentaries themselves were by Albert's own design intended to be paraphrases with brief explanatory notes. However, many of the explanatory notes are not very brief and Albert adds what he calls 'digressions'. A single digression in the work On Animals is over three hundred pages long in the edition which was published in 1920.

The work On Animals was probably written over a four-year period and the actual writing of it did not begin until around 1258. There is absolutely no doubt about its authenticity and since the autograph still exists it provides a unique opportunity for examining Albert at work. The Stadler edition of it which was published 1917-1920 runs to 1598 pages of text. It was, of course, intended to be a commentary on Aristotle's biological treatises. The text shows that Albert had access to the translation of these works which was prepared by a friend and fellow Dominican, William of Moerbeke, sometime in the middle 1260s. Another earlier edition, that of Michael Scot, was also used by Albert, as was a Greek text. This work is the first of its kind, and remained a reputable, acknowledged authority for almost five hundred years. Like all pioneers, Albert left a trail of mistakes behind him; but in the period between Aristotle and the sixteenth century there is no other work which even comes close to Albert's in its attempts to provide a descriptive and experimental approach to biological phenomena.

Of course, one has to be very careful when one sees in Albert (or any other medieval author, for that matter) references to "experience" and "experiment" as well as claims about having observed some particular phenomena. In Albert's case some of the repeated statements about the need for observation should, I think, be thought of as part of his polemic against those (e.g., the "Plato" whom Albert knew) who denied the essential role of observations. Nevertheless, it is quite easy to make a case for the claim that Albert's general approach is empirical in a sense of that word which is contemporary.

To support this claim I would like to mention three aspects of Albert's writings: (1) his theoretical defense of an empirical approach against those who claimed that the divine will was a sufficient explanation of natural events; (2) his repeated references to empirical criteria in his own works on natural science; (3) his comments on sexual anatomy.

One of the strongest criticisms of an observational approach to nature was the claim that such an approach led to a denial of divine causality. In Albert's work On the Causes and Properties of the Elements and of the Planets, Albert raises this question in the beginning. Albert says that some men attribute the Biblical flood to God's will; he answers that he too believes that ultimately God was the cause of the flood. However, this does not mean that to attribute it to God's causality explains the phenomenon. God acts through natural causes, and it is important to seek out the natural causes of natural phenomena. And the way to do this is to make observations of particular phenomena. He ends the discussion of the question with the following comment: "It is not enough to know in terms of universals, but we seek to know each object's own peculiar characteristics, for this is the best and perfect kind of science." Though Albert thought that one must deal with the general principles of natural sciences, he stresses the necessity for including the details. This demand for concrete, specific, detailed, accurate knowledge of discrete particulars is a complete about-face from the contemporary interpretations of Plato and from much that is also in Aristotle's earlier works. It amounts to a rejection—at least for the natural sciences—of any practical interest in the subsistent ideas of Plato.

In addition to this theoretical defense of the need for observation in the natural sciences, the work On Animals contains many references to empirical criteria to justify a claim. This can be made clear by examining Albert's attitude to some of the ancient authorities and by noticing the phrases he uses to describe animals and their behavior. Though Albert used Pliny as a source for his work, he is doubtful of Pliny's accuracy and even observes that Pliny says many things which are quite false. Others come in for equally strong condemnation. Even Aristotle is occasionally questioned, though always diffidently.

The usual grounds on which Albert corrects some authority, and the customary verification of some claim is that he has "tested" it. "Expertus sum" or some variation on it appears over and over, especially toward the end of the work On Animals. Sometimes he says that he has tested it by observing some particular animal behavior, other times that he not only tested it himself but showed it to his associates, or that he has observed it many times. He many times indicates that he has himself not observed some phenomena, but is relying on the reports of others. Among those who make reports he attempts to distinguish between those who are believable and those who are not. Thus he says an associate who is trustworthy (unus de nostris sociis fide dignus) told him that large lizards, as large as the shinbone of a man, can be observed in Spain. Other times he says that a common belief is not proved, or something just has not been proved, or that it has not been proved "per experimentum." Occasionally he simply reports ("dicitur") some claim without commenting, or simply comments that he is uncertain ("an verum sit ignoratur").

Not only does Albert use expressions indicating that he has "tested" the truth of certain claims through observations, he also reports some crude experiments which he conducted in order to verify or falsify certain empirical claims. The kind of experiments were, of course, simple and crude by our standards. Thus he says that he and his associates discovered that if cicadas have their heads cut off, they will continue to make their distinctive noise. ("Experti sumus ego et mei socii quod capite amputando aliquando diu cantat in pectore sonans sicut fecit antea.") He dismissed the view that ostriches eat iron, and suggests a possible source for this erroneous belief, when he reports his own attempts to feed different bits of things to these birds. ("De hac ave dicitur quod ferrum comedat et digerat: sed ego non sum hoc expertus quia ferrum sæpius a me pluribus strutionibus obiectum comedere noluerunt. Sed ossa magna ad breves partes truncata et arida et lapides avide comederunt") He talks about the dissection which he and his associates have done on bees and grasshoppers, and the behavior of scorpions which he submerged in olive oil. Though these are not experiments devised to test a sophisticated modern hypothesis, they are controlled attempts to empirically verify or falsify some observational claim. Thus, in addition to Albert's theoretical defense of the need for observation of particulars (against those who claimed that such interests were irreligious and inclined one to deny Divine causality) Albert's own practice of making many empirical observations shows, at the very least, his commitment to an empirical approach.

This commitment can be made even more apparent by paying close attention to what Albert has to say about sexual anatomy and physiology. There are, of course, many mistakes in Albert's treatment of these topics.

However, I think we should remind ourselves that of all areas of human structure and function, the sexual seems to be most incapable of throwing off mistaken and often quite superstitious beliefs. Even our own day (which is supposed to be one of sexual enlightenment) holds onto some absurd beliefs. Thus as recently as 1969, the coaches of the Superbowl warned the players not to have intercourse the night before the game since intercourse debilitates the body. And William Ogle, M.D., in what is an extremely well done and accurate commentary on Aristotle's Parts of Animals, notes that some Negroes have bones in their penises. If supposedly educated people in the 20th Century hold such beliefs, we cannot expect a 13th-Century Dominican priest to be entirely free of error on these matters. That he is comparatively free of the kind of errors that can be found, for example, in his early contemporary Constantine the African, is, I believe, a tribute to Albert's reliance on observation.

Albert's major comments on sexual anatomy and physiology are in Books 1,15 and 22 of his work on animals; there are also many other references to sexual structure and function in the other twenty-three books of this work. The sections in Books 1 and 15 are attempted periphrastic restatements of Aristotle's views in the Parts of Animals and the Generation of Animals with the frequent digressions spoken of earlier. By Book 22, Albert has long since given up the paraphrasing-with-additions and presents a synthetic treatment of various topics with occasional references to authorities, both ancient and modern, especially to Avicenna.

Albert's treatment differs from his chief ancient authority, namely Aristotle, by the addition of empirical observations not found in Aristotle, by stressing homologies—that is, the parallels—between male and female structures and functions and by adding a "psychology of sexual arousal" not found in Aristotle. Albert differs from his early contemporary, Constantine the African, in several ways: Albert has much more detailed and accurate description of anatomy; Albert's treatment of physiology is not nearly so dependent on the fourhumor theory and Galenic physiology; Albert devotes about equal space to his description of male and female—whereas in Constantine's treatise, references to the female are quite incidental; finally, Albert leaves out all mention of Constantine's dubious pharmaceutical remedies for impotence and for prolonging intercourse. I think that this omission is significant and an indication of Albert's more empirical approach, since Albert quotes Constantine by name and explicitly refers to the work On Intercourse. Albert also refers to the problems of sterility and impotence. He apparently even repeated a putative test for sterility which Aristotle mentions in the Generation of Animals. Albert claims that the sperm of a fertile male will briefly float on the surface of water and then gradually sink to the bottom in sort of viscous globs. On the other hand, the sperm of an infertile man—especially an older male—lacks the viscous, globular texture and will therefore be diffused on the surface of the water. This "test"—which, given certain qualification, happens to be the case—shows that Albert was interested in problems of sterility and the several passages where he discusses them provided the opportunity to analyze Constantine's views. However, he never mentions them; and in one place, where he refers to pharmaceutical preparations connected with sterility, he says, "All these kinds of things seem absurd to us," though Albert does say that he must study the causes of sterility since "medicine must cure them." Having noticed these passages from Albert, it seems at least probable that he left out the preparations mentioned by Constantine because he thought that they, too, were "absurd". It is well known that Albert and other 13th-century scholastics generally did not mention by name their immediate predecessors and contemporaries when they were in serious disagreement with them. Of course, it is not too difficult to show that Albert's work, from a scientific stand-point, is quite superior to that of Constantine, even though Constantine's works were required texts in the medical curriculum until long after Albert's time.

However, I think that Albert's work compares favorably with Aristotle's. Though Albert did not do the extensive dissections that Aristotle did, when the opportunity presents itself, he adds observations of his own and points out homologies that Aristotle either denied or did not mention. From a technical viewpoint, Albert is wrong about some of his homologies, but he is convinced that there are structural parallels between the male and female sexual organs. An indication of Albert's conviction about the homologies between male and female is that he uses one word for penis and clitoris (usually virga). He several times refers to various homologies such as when he talks about the vagina as a sort of invaginated scrotum, and about the two testicles in the male and two testicles in the female. These parallels are not stressed in Aristotle, who says, in the History of Animals, that the vagina is proper only to the female and the penis is proper only to the male, and the "privy parts of the female" (to use the rather Victorian phrase in the Oxford English Aristotle) are the opposite of the male's. In another place Albert notes carefully what the differences are between the structures which he parallels in these passages. For example, he says that the testicles of the male are exterior to the body and larger than those of the female which are interior.

Albert also sees a parallel in the physiology of intercourse. Albert apparently thought that Aristotle's explanation of engorgement is too simple, and Albert speaks of a special substance, ventositas, which he sometimes refers to as a gas and other times as a liquid. He thinks of it as a special modification of body heat, which modification is only found in the genital region. By means of this ventosity, the heat "enlarges the genital organs (of both sexes); and since there is some difference between the sexes, the male organs swell out and harden while the female organs open up and become engorged, though less so than the male organs." I should point out that his reference to "some difference" occurs after he has stressed that the differences between the sexes are mainly differences of shapes of the breasts and genital organs. Albert thinks of the differences between the sexes as "modal" and not "real".

Another interesting difference between the Aristotelian text and Albert's commentary are the additional comments he makes to verify some things Aristotle has said by referring to some observation or "experiment" Albert has made. I have already referred to Albert's description of the action of male sperm in a container of water. Albert similarly elaborates when he says that not only is the hymen broken during the first intercourse, it can also be broken by sticking one's finger through it. He adds to Aristotle's account of the ejaculation of sperm that one can produce a substance in both the male and female, which is intermediate between sperm and sweat, by slight sexual stimulation. He says that this substance is not an ejaculation but is produced in a man, for example, by the touch of a woman with whom he would like to have intercourse. According to Albert, one can also show that women have sperm. He says that the way to do this is by moving rapidly the end of the clitoris with the hand. Albert adds that thus she will feel the delight of intercourse and have an orgasm. Parenthetically, mention should be made of the fact that in Book 22, after Albert has given up paraphrasing Aristotle, he says that "Generation among men is through intercourse in which there is a mixture of the powers of the two sexes; from the male sperm which acts as the mover and from the female sperm or rather the female clear fluid as well as the menstrual blood which is the material." This passage seems to indicate that though Albert has apparently adhered to the male and female sperm view of Aristotle as well as assigning to each a different kind of causality, he believes that the two are by no means the same liquid.

Albert does not offer a "proof that males have sperm, but he does say that the way we know that the source of the male sperm is in the testicles is that during coitus at the time of orgasm, the testicles are drawn up and hug the pecten or pubic bone so that the sperm may be expelled. This localization of the sperm apparently was a problem for Albert. In the same section as the above comment, he says that one should not be surprised if a bull is fertile right after castration: it may be the case that sperm is already in the canals of the penis itself.

I think that all of these comments—and others could be cited to the same purpose—show that Albert was committed to serious, scientific observation of things some might think are not the proper business of a 13th-century friar. As mentioned before, there were those who thought that the study of Aristotle and the adoption of an empirical outlook would lead to irreligion. Some apparently found in Albert's work the incarnation of their worst fears. The Franciscan, Roger Bacon, thought that Albert's reputation for learning had seduced the Latins and that Albert's learning was a disgrace. However, Albert's championing of Aristotle's later empirical approach caught on in some quarters. But lest these pages lead the reader to believe that Albert's empirical approach should have been in the eyes of his ecclesiastical colleagues entirely unobjectionable, let me close with one of his own summariès:

So far we have spoken of the act of generation among animals in general. However in man, since his nature is nobler, the act of intercourse is more complex. One important difference is that humans enjoy sex more than other animals. In the human animal at the time for intercourse consciousness of a sexual form exists: thus in the male with the image of a lovable woman before the eyes of his heart, and in the female with the image of a desired man before the eyes of her heart, there arises a fierce longing for intercourse. These interior images are like the first movers toward those things which lead up to intercourse.

There follows a short passage in which Albert explains briefly how body heat is changed into the "ventosity" mentioned above, and his text continues

… and when the ventosity is firm and plentiful the penis becomes almost bone-like; the penis becomes so hard that sometimes the canal through which the sperm should be ejaculated is closed off with ventosity and the sperm cannot shoot out until a moment later when the ventosity is given off.

How Albertus got his information we can only guess. But his observations clearly manifest a growing interest in the empirical.