ADELARD OF BATH. - English by birth, he completed his studies at Tours and taught at Laon. Dissatisfied with the "gallica studia", he undertook long journeys in southern Italy, in Sicily, where he enjoyed the favor of William, bishop of Syracuse, in the Near East and in Palestine. His direct familiarity with the scientific works of the Greeks and Arabs provided him with new and important materials for his favored studies of physics, astronomy and mathematics. On returning to his homeland, he seems to have obtained some teaching post at the royal court; meanwhile he devoted himself to compiling treatises in dialogue form and to preparing translations in order to make the philosophy and sciences of Mediterranean culture accessible to the West. His death is placed around 1160.
Works of his that are certainly authentic are: De eodem et diverso, ed. H. Willner (Bacumher Beitr., IV, 1, Münster in W. 1903); Perdifficiles quaestiones naturales, translated at the end of the 13th century into Hebrew, as M. Steinschneider has demonstrated (Die hebr. Uebersetzungen..., Berlin 1893, § 275, p. 464) and published at the end of the 1500s; Regulae abaci, published by Boncompagni in his Bullettino della biografia e della storia delle scienze, 14 (1881), pp. 1-134; Eish Elkauresni, a version of the astronomical tables of al-Khuwarizmi (1126); Elements of Euclid, translated from the Arabic; The Astrolabe and De cura accipitrum, which is a treatise on falcon hunting (ed. A. E. H. Swain, Göttingen 1937).
In the controversy over universals, A. opposes exaggerated realism, and his solution makes him a precursor of Abelard. In the Quaestiones naturales his spirit of observation frequently stands out, while in them he denounces the laziness of repeaters and calls authority the halter (capistrum) of the intelligence. In physiology he leaves Aristotle to follow Galen and the Salernitan physicians; he states the principle of the continuity of nature and the indestructibility of matter, and he seems to have been the first among the Latins to use the way of motion to prove the existence of God. A. occupies a leading position in the development of science, not only of the 12th century but of the entire Middle Ages; he is the pioneer of the scientific method, which he knew how to unite with an exquisite taste for classical antiquity, revealed by his passionate research into Greek and Arab works and recognizable in the unmistakable style of his works, which recalls the classical models.
Bibliography5 works
Cornelio Fabro