- From many and varied causes that had been building up for centuries, the Western Empire crumbled in the 6th century. With the barbarians invading from the north, scientific progress came to a standstill. The few important links with the learning of the past were the hand-copied manuscripts carefully guarded in the monasteries of Britain and Italy. Although this period of the Middle Ages was not a time of scientific progress and experiment, men were trained to think. The habit of definite, exact thought was implanted in the European mind by theologians and philosophers of the late Middle Ages. With the spread of Islam after the death of Muhammad, the almost forgotten culture of the Greeks and the Near East was reintroduced into Western Europe. From the 9th to the 11th centuries this transmission vivified medieval thought with Arabic translations of Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and others. During this period Avicenna (980–1037) wrote his famous “Canon” of medical science, which remained for centuries the principal authority in medical schools in both Europe and Asia.
- By the 13th century the translations of Aristotle’s zoological works provided an alternative to the bestiaries with their fabulous accounts, opening people’s eyes to what true biological inquiry consisted in. Albert the Great’s (1206?–1280) commentaries on Aristotle’s zoological works include his personal observations of animals.
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