Fitting Into Spradley’s Historical Model: St. Albert the Great
Written By: Cody Bogart
St. Albert the Great (1200-1280), or Albertus Magnus amongst friends, is dubbed “the Great”, “Patron Saint of Scientists”, and the “Universal (or Church) Doctor”. With roots and blood in the Roman Catholic Church, he pursued an education and career in theology and Aristotelian philosophy, eventually combining the two into a revolutionary thought process called Scholasticism, leading to condemnation of philosophies and eventually the birth of modern science and understanding.
In years of moving through parts of Europe (Paris and Germany mainly) as a priest, bishop, professor, and lector, Albert was able to create connections with universities, spread his…show more content… He used Arab and original teachings to paraphrase, translate, and distribute these “I was present and I saw it happening,” he would say (in Latin), showing an obvious agreement with Aristotle’s position of senses being superior when dealing with observation. He went on to translate, paraphrase, and question Aristotle’s works, and many others, so that they could be better understood and brought back into discussion. He also composed commentaries on works like; Euclid’s Metaphysics, Sentences, Elements of Geometry, and Aristotle’s On Animals and Physics. These commentaries were directed to do two things that Albert felt were needed; provide insight to the common man and fill gaps in these preceding works with rhetoric questions and…show more content… His approaches were highly logical and empirical in nature but at ties and lean towards a Neo-Platonism tone, holding inductive and deductive reasoning. His physics can be called Aristotelian in that it was very form heavy, caring about matter and the different changes that it underwent and why it did. In regards to biology, botany, zoology, and mineralogy, his interests were the variations of species and their connection to environment. He also did some dissections of bugs, plants, and small animals to see inner functionality and anatomy, comparing and contrasting as he went. On top of that work he would go on to be one of the first to attempt a unified categorization of plants, animals, and minerals, while using a highly efficient understanding in anatomy and physiology of all three. For astronomy, Albert used an Aristotelian and Christian mixture of thought when dealing with celestial bodies. Using God as the top of the chain, he ranked the rest of beings under Him; having minerals, plants, animals, “rational animals” (humans, men being superior). He had the Christian mindset that the Good Lord made the whole universe for the their world to be at the
