Adelard of Bath Quotes
Adelard of Bath was an English natural philosopher, mathematician, and translator and one of the principal channels by which Greek and Arabic scientific learning reached the Latin West. After studies at Tours and Laon he traveled for years in Sicily, Spain, and the Crusader Levant, learning Arabic and gathering manuscripts. The quotes below are attributed to Adelard of Bath, organized by topic.
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Adelard of Bath on Knowledge
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Attributed to Adelard of Bath:
“I have learned from my Arabic masters to put reason first; from my Latin teachers, authority.”
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Attributed to Adelard of Bath:
“If reason cannot teach the cause, the appeal to authority is vain.”
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Attributed to Adelard of Bath:
“Travel makes the mind a citizen of the world.”
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“Adelard of Bath, Dodi Ve-Nechdi , ed. and trans. H. Gollancz, Oxford University Press, London, 1920, pp. 98–99. Adapted by the author.”
From my Arab teachers I have learnt one thing, to have reason as my guide, while you are dazzled by the show of authority and led by a halter. For what is authority to be called, but a halter? As the brute beasts, indeed, are led by the halter, and have no idea by what they are led or why, but only follow the rope that holds them, so also the authority of writers leads not a few of you into danger -
“From my Arab teachers I have learnt one thing, to have reason as my guide, while you are dazzled by the show of authority and led by a halter. For what is authority to be called, but a halter? As the brute beasts, indeed, are led by the halter, and have no idea by what they are led or why, but only follow the rope that holds them, so also the authority of writers leads not a few of you into danger”
quoted in Euclid and Jesus, How and why the church changed mathematics and Christianity across two religious wars C. K. Raju
Adelard of Bath on Mind
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“From my Arab teachers I have learnt one thing, to have reason as my guide, while you are dazzled by the show of authority and led by a halter. For what is authority to be called, but a halter? As the brute beasts, indeed, are led by the halter, and have no idea by what they are led or why, but only follow the rope that holds them, so also the authority of writers leads not a few of you into danger, tied and bound by brutish credulity.”
Adelard of Bath, Dodi Ve-Nechdi , ed. and trans. H. Gollancz, Oxford University Press, London, 1920, pp. 98–99. Adapted by the author. | quoted in Euclid and Jesus, How and why the church changed mathematics and Christianity across two religious wars C. K. Raju
Adelard of Bath on Nature
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Attributed to Adelard of Bath:
“Nature is to be questioned, not merely accepted.”
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Attributed to Adelard of Bath:
“The world is a single causal order open to honest inquiry.”
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“The present generation has this ingrained weakness, that it thinks that nothing discovered by the moderns is worthy to be received—the result of this is that if I wanted to publish anything of my own invention I should attribute it to someone else, and say, “Someone else said this, not I.” Therefore (that I may not wholly be robbed of a hearing) it was a certain great man that discovered all my id”
quoted in C. K. Raju, Cultural Foundations of Mathematics , Vol. 10, Pt. 4 : The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe (India: Pearson Longman, 2007)
Adelard of Bath on Time
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“The present generation has this ingrained weakness, that it thinks that nothing discovered by the moderns is worthy to be received—the result of this is that if I wanted to publish anything of my own invention I should attribute it to someone else, and say, “Someone else said this, not I.” Therefore (that I may not wholly be robbed of a hearing) it was a certain great man that discovered all my ideas, not I.”
quoted in C. K. Raju, Cultural Foundations of Mathematics , Vol. 10, Pt. 4 : The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe (India: Pearson Longman, 2007)