Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 99
more strictly scientific progress. This was due partly to superior artisans, such as
Leonardo da Vinci, looking at the theoretical bases of their arts as a source for
improvement, and partly to scholars publishing surveys of craft techniques, for
example the De re metallica of Georg Bauer (Georgius Agricola) in which the
author gave a systematic account of current mining and metallurgical practices.
Many such techniques had remained unchanged since Antiquity, and were
simply passed from master to apprentice by word of mouth. Bringing them out into
the cold light of print could suggest modes of improvement, and later became
formalized in the injunction to produce histories of trades—what can be, and
sometimes were, called ‘technologies’. These and many other factors provoked a
strong urge towards improvement, and a conviction that systematic intellectual
activity was at least as important as trial and error or reliance upon tradition. And
this applied not only to the more banausic areas of technics, but also to more
rarefied and seemingly ‘impractical’ fields.
But a desire for progress is one thing: achieving it is another. And here we
meet more and more frequently with the term ‘method’ and its relations. The
search for this had roots in several fields, mathematical, philosophical, medical,
magical…. We consider briefly the first two. The mathematical revival of the
sixteenth century is characterized particularly by the greater availability of
important ancient works, through both the production of new translations and the
dissemination of these in print. This gave rise to two reflections. First, it became
evident that many significant works were (probably irretrievably) lost, but
second, sufficient evidence was often available about their contents for plausible
attempts at reconstruction to be made. This did not directly imply method, but it
did make for mathematical progress, for restoration was to be achieved not by
philology alone but by trying to do mathematics in the Greek spirit. As an
attempt at exact replication this failed, but it did produce new mathematics, and
so we have a kind of surreptitious progress in which efforts at reviving the old
produced developments that were radically new.
Others were more open in their endeavours, and indeed accused the ancients
of being clandestine. From Antiquity onwards it had been realized that some of
the most impressive results of Greek geometry resembled a beautiful building
from which all trace of scaffolding and other accessories had been removed. Hence
Plutarch on Archimedes:
It is not possible to find in geometry more difficult and weighty questions
treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this to the natural
endowments of the man, others think it was the result of exceeding labour
that everything done by him appeared to have been done without labour
and with ease. For although by his own efforts no one could discover the
proof, yet as soon as he learns it, he takes credit that he could have
discovered it: so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads to the
conclusion. 11