to the imperfection of Nature not answerable to the preciseness of demonstration."
The preface is framed for such
who well can, (and also will) use their outward senses to the glory of God, the benefite of their Country, and their own secret contentation, or honest preferment on this earthly Scaffold. To them I will orderly recite, describe and declare a great number of Artes, from our two Mathematicall fountaines, derived into the fields of Nature. Whereby such Sedes, and Rotes, as lye depe hyd in the ground of Nature, are refreshed, quickened, and provoked to grow, shote up, floure, and give frute, infinite, and incredible. . . . At this time I define an Arte to be a Methodicall complete doctrine, having abundancy of sufficient, and peculiar matter to deale with, by the allowance of the Metaphysicall Philosopher: the knowledge whereof, to humaine state is necessarye. And that I account, an Art Mathematicall derivative, which by Mathematicall demonstrative Method, in Numbers, or Magnitudes, ordereth and confirmeth his doctrine, as much and as perfectly, as the matter subject will admit.
It seems certain that John Dee had also a conscious belief in the value to science itself of the application of its principles. He invites his reader to "consider the infinite desire of knowledge, and incredible power of man's Search and Capacitye how, they jointly have waded farder by mixtying of speculation and practise." Compare with this a sentence by Ernst Haeckel written three centuries later:
We must welcome as one of the most fortunate steps in the direction of a solution of the great cosmic problems the fact that of recent years there is a growing tendency to recognize the two paths which alone lead thereto—experience and thought, or speculation to be of equal value, and mutually complementary.[1]
John Dee's long life covers a dramatic period in the history of the development of thought, and as the most widely known English scholar of his generation his education and wanderings are interesting. It was in 1526 that the books were burned in Oxford in the futile attempt to stop the new learning. In the following year John Dee was born of the ancient family of Dees of Radnorshire. His father, Rowland Dee, was by some accounts a vintner in London, by others he is described as gentleman sewer to Henry VIII. Whatever his occupation, he was a friend to the universities, and in 1542 sent his son to St. John's College, Cambridge. Here he remained, first as student, then as foundation fellow, until 1546. When in the same year Trinity College was founded by patent of Henry VIII., Dee was made one of the original fellows and was, as he says, assigned there to be the "under reader of the Greek tongue." At the same time he was occupied with mathematical and astronomical studies and on "going down" gave to Trinity his astronomical instruments.
At that time the men of the universities seemed not to aspire to know more than was to be learned from Plato and Aristotle. That John Dee had a mental appetite beyond the ability of Cambridge to satisfy appears from his account of his wanderings.
- ↑ "Riddle of the Universe," p. 18.
