The Bath Magazine November 2020

Page 44

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HISTORY

Adelard of Bath

You might not yet know his name, but the intellectual and scientific accomplishments of Adelard of Bath make him one of our city’s great citizens. Ruby Bosanquet investigates the history and legacy of the man known as the first English scientist

J

ane Austen, John Wood the elder and the Wife of Bath are just a few of the names associated with great Bathonians. But there is a new (and much older) contender, the mathematician and scientist Adelard of Bath. Regarded as the first English scientist and one of the great minds of the Middle Ages, Adelard was born in Bath in 1080 and died in the city after 1152. You’ll be forgiven for not having heard of Adelard – while his work was highly significant in the development of modern science and there are extensive records of his writing, little is known about Adelard himself. It is through the diligent research of writer Louise Cochrane, who wrote Adelard of Bath; the First English Scientist, that light has been spread on this incredible Bathonian. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) has recently republished Cochrane’s work and helped build more awareness of Adelard through a self-guided trail and a proposal for a new monument to reflect his achievements. When Adelard was born, Bath was very different to the city we now know. It was a small community of just over a thousand people, most of whom lived in primitive dwellings. The Norman Conquest was still very recent (1066), and Bath was a site of destruction following a rebellion against William II. It was only when John of Tours, the Bishop of Wells, moved the seat of diocese from Wells to Bath in 1090, that the city met a turning point. John of Tours put plans in place to build a new cathedral, a school and a hospital. Unfortunately little remains of this great redevelopment, but it led to Bath becoming a centre of learning. As a student in Bath at this time, Adelard benefitted greatly from John of Tours’ influence. It was under John of Tours that the Benedictine monks in Bath became known for their scholarship, and ran a monastery where Adelard was educated. Adelard’s family was closely connected to John of Tours and once Adelard had finished his education in Bath he was sent to Tours in France, where the Bishop received his own education. It was after this that Adelard published his first piece of work De eodem et diverso (‘On Sameness and Diversity’). Here, Adelard explored the differences between Plato and Aristotle’s work on human existence before producing his own explanation to reconcile the two theories. Adelard’s work in De eodem et diverso was a highly advanced piece of writing, and demonstrates his capabilities from a young age. Not content with his work in philosophy, Adelard wished to increase his knowledge and did so by travelling extensively in the Islamic world. While Europe ABOVE: A library in Baghdad in the Golden Islamic Age, from a 13th-century manuscript, drawn by Al-Wasiti in the celebrated book The Assemblies by Hariri LEFT: The map shows the Islamic view of how the universe is structured. The sky is held by Allah so that it does not fall on earth; the earth is considered flat and is surrounded by the mountains of Qaf, supported by an ox that stands on a fish in a cosmic ocean; and the ocean is inside a bowl that sits on top of an angel/devil. This surprising (to our eyes) physical concept of the world makes Adelard’s scientific endeavours even more noteworthy OPPOSITE: Illustration at the beginning of Euclid’s Elements, translated by Adelard of Bath. This shows a detail of a scene in the bowl of the letter  ‘P’ with a woman with a set square and dividers, using a compass to measure distances on a diagram.  She is most likely the personification of geometry 44 TheBATHMagazine

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noveMBeR 2020

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issue 215

was experiencing the Dark Ages, the Islamic world was having its Golden Age; a period of flourishing cultural, economic and scientific growth. It is through his travelling that Adelard made some of his most significant contributions to modern science. It allowed him to gain access to Arabic knowledge and lost texts that were no longer available in the Western world. There he led the way in translating important Arabic and Ancient Greek theory and mathematics into Latin, making them available to Western scholars. One of Adelard’s most influential translations was Euclid’s Elements. This was written in Greek in 300 BC, and by the time Adelard discovered Euclid, the work had already been translated into Arabic and had had a substantial effect on Arabic mathematics. Still considered one of the most successful and influential textbooks ever written, Elements is a vast compendium of classical mathematical knowledge and without Adelard would not have been available to the Western audience. His translation brought the use of theorems and proof to develop mathematical arguments to the attention of Western scholars for the first time, and proved instrumental in the development of logic and modern science. Adelard’s introduction of Euclid to Western scholars led to an expansion in geometry knowledge and collided with the beginnings of medieval Gothic architecture, which was highly influenced by geometry. Another significant discovery Adelard introduced to Europe was the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi, also known as the Zij. The complex collection of tables and detailed calculations is far from easy to understand so Adelard’s translation was a remarkable intellectual achievement. His translation of the Zij contributed substantially to Western scientific development, and was actively used until as late as the 19th century. The original Zij no longer exists, so Adelard’s translation remains incredibly important to understanding the development of astronomy. Although much of Adelard’s fame historically derived from his translations, his own work is still highly advanced and significant. On his return to England, Adelard wrote Quaestiones naturales (“Questions on Natural Science”). Unlike De eodem et diverso, this


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