ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters we have traced the growth and development of the Arabist tradition in Europe. This Eastern learning essentially meant the relegation of experiment and observation to the background, while wordy dialectics and an unreasoning reverence for the doctrines of the Ancients (Galen and Aristotle in particular) were given a position of prominence. The writings of the earlier experimenters, such as Saliceto and Mundinus, were coloured with the Arabism which was dominant in their day, and it was not until the mantle of these early forward-looking workers had been taken up by those who followed, and the spark of the spirit of inquiry kept alive until we arrive at the dawn of the modern period and the publication of the fundamentally modern works of Vesalius and Copernicus in a.d. 1543, that the experimenters of Mediaeval Times finally vanquished the Arabist Tradition in the Latin West.
