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5 82 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
in answer to the nephew's inquiry, expounding Plato's theory
that a stone dropped through a hole bored through a diameter
of the earth would fall only as far as the centre and then come
to a stop.
As the new translations, at the end of the twelfth century,
revealed more and more of Aristotle's physical conceptions,
these came to replace Plato's as a guide for scientific thinking,
though the Timaeuswas certainly not forgotten, but joined with
the new translations of Ptolemy's astronomy, ofthe medicine,
anatomy, and physiology of Hippocrates and Galen, of the
numerous Arabic writings on these subjects, especially the
commentaries of Avicenna and the Spanish Arab, Averroes,
and of various important works on mathematics, mechanics,
and optics, to enrich with variety and to change in many de/
tails a predominantly Aristotelian scene.
The first important influence of Aristotle came, about the
middle of the twelfth century, with the so-called 'new logic',
especially the translations of the Prior and Posterior Analytics,
Aristotle's main treatises on formal logic and scientific method.
John of Salisbury, who became bishop of Chartres, shows a
good knowledge of these in his Metalogicon, written in 1159.
Aristotle's writings on natural science came to be studied
seriously in the first decade ofthe thirteenth century. Alexander
Neckham, who taught at a school at Oxford and died in 1217
as abbot of Cirencester, cited many of Aristotle's opinions
about animals, cosmology, and other matters in his De Rerum
Natura. Though written rather for moral than for scientific in/
struction, this work shows Neckham to have been a keen
student of science. Alfred of Sareshel dedicated his De Motu
CortKs to him. Neckham recalls the happy past when 'the
greatest princes were diligent and industrious in aiding in^
vestigation ofnature*, but he is not dissatisfied with the schools
ofhis own day, which he believed had surpassed those ofcon'
temporary Greece and Egypt. Ofspecial interest are Neckham's
accounts of the mariner's first compass (the
in Latin) and of
glass mirrors; like many medieval writers he had an optimistic
expectation of the practical results of science, in peace and in