斯格特Michael Scot

斯格特（或拉丁化形式斯格特 Scotus）是一个兼具历史与传说色彩的人物，这使他难以被清晰辨识。尽管人们认为他来自英格兰北部与苏格兰南部交界地区，但其出身已受到质疑，因为1223年，他拒绝爱尔兰卡舍尔大主教一职时声称自己不懂盖尔语。然而，盖尔语在苏格兰南部（与北部相对）并不广泛使用，而且鉴于斯格特曾突破多种语言的障碍而履职无碍，这一说法可能只是为拒绝该职位而夸大的借口。在1227年致斯蒂芬·兰顿的一封信中，教皇洪诺留三世将斯格特描述为热忱献身于文学与科学from boyhood up。桑代克推断他是一个由叔父抚养长大的无父男孩。沃尔特·司各特将他等同于巴尔韦里的斯格特爵士，此人于1290年被派往挪威执行特别使命，但大多数历史学家对此不予采信。然而，考虑到当时的教育费用，他与小贵族有联系的可能性并未被排除。据称他的教育始于达勒姆大教堂学校，并包括牛津和巴黎大学，在那里他学习了数学、占星术（其中包括天文学）、炼金术和医学。

关于他生平与工作的最早有文献记载的记录日期为1217年8月18日，地点在西班牙托莱多，斯格特在那里完成了将al-Bitruji的Alpetragius从阿拉伯语翻译成拉丁语的工作，这是第一部提出非托勒密天文学体系的著作。斯格特是托莱多翻译学派的一员，并在大主教罗德里戈·希门尼斯·德·拉达的指导下得到犹太学者的协助，后者在1212年对抗穆斯林阿尔摩哈德王朝的拉斯纳瓦斯德托洛萨战役中发挥了关键作用。该学派在上一个世纪已经接纳过诸如克雷莫纳的杰拉德（1114-1187）这样的著名翻译家。

最近一项基于斯格特所写关于多重彩虹段落的研究[12]——多重彩虹是一种只有现代物理学和近期观测才能理解的现象——表明斯格特可能曾与撒哈拉沙漠中的图阿雷格人有过接触。

到1227-8年，斯格特和斐波那契都在霍亨斯陶芬的腓特烈二世（1194-1250）的宫廷中，后者是神圣罗马帝国的统治者。两人都在将穆斯林的许多科学知识（主要来自摩尔人的西班牙）传播到欧洲（主要是意大利和西西里）的过程中发挥了作用，从而为围绕意大利文艺复兴的科学发展的许多种子播下了基础。据说斯格特曾是一位皇室导师，但手稿给他冠以“占星家”的头衔。斯格特写了许多书，但他最重要的贡献是通过他人并与他的翻译工作相关。斐波那契著名的数学著作Liber Abaci的第二版于1227年献给斯格特。托莱多学派翻译了花拉子米的著作，或许甚至还有阿布·卡米勒的著作。斐波那契为这部Liber Abaci大量使用了它们。有人提出，斯格特甚至可能在斐波那契序列的呈现中发挥了间接作用。斯格特翻译的Historia animalium——一部由Aristotle所著、附有伊本·鲁世德（阿威罗伊）评注的动物学自然史文本——将帮助腓特烈撰写他自己著名的猎鹰术著作。这本书于1240年出版，名为De Arte Venandi cum Avibu（《猎鸟的艺术》），被认为是最早关于鸟类行为的研究之一，也是已知第一部包含鸟类插图的作品。

腓特烈派斯格特前往欧洲著名大学交流他的译作和其他学术著作，包括牛津，斯格特在那里遇到了一位年轻的罗吉尔·培根。斯格特还探索了利帕里群岛，试图用炼金术术语理解如今已被认识到的火山活动与黄金存在之间的联系。例如，众所周知，1849年加利福尼亚淘金热正是由这种火山活动的结果所引发的。另一篇近期文章认为，斯格特凭借其在度量、计算和炼金术方面的技能，在腓特烈二世[13]引入的Augustalis gold coin的创建中发挥了重要的幕后作用。

弗雷德里克宫廷的重要性可能被一些人夸大了（例如，2和5）。尽管如此，腓特烈二世不顾罗马天主教会的抗议，授权进行了首次尸检，因为更好地了解人体解剖结构对于改进医学至关重要。1543年，也就是尼古拉·哥白尼撰写其天文学论著De revolutionibus orbium coelestium（《天体运行论》）的同一年，安德烈亚斯·维萨里撰写了其解剖学论著De Humani Corporis Fabrica（《人体结构》）。人体解剖揭示了许多古希腊医生盖伦的解剖学错误。这一发现以及其他科学发现的线索都可以追溯到弗雷德里克的宫廷。在“黑暗时代”，问题并不完全在于书籍的不可获得，许多书籍在罗马帝国衰亡期间被毁。围绕这些书籍的“科学文化”本身已被遗忘。然而，穆斯林学术对古希腊人和其他文化的著作保留了更好的集体记忆，而斯格特在将这些知识带入欧洲方面发挥了连接作用。斯格特自身的贡献既晦涩难懂又被误解，部分原因是他生活在一个科学、迷信、宗教和魔法信仰在一个混乱无序的思想体系中并存的时代，即科学的“史前史”。例如，当时（甚至在约翰内斯·开普勒的时代）被称为占星术和天文学的现代概念被融合在一个称为“占星术”的思想体系中。尽管如此，斯格特是善于观察的。他用拉丁文对“博洛尼亚的玛丽”的医学病例进行了非常细致的描述，该病例被认定为“钙化纤维瘤”，但在20世纪70年代被认识到是对一种非常罕见的流产或“自然流产”病例的描述，该流产未立即排出，双胞胎胚胎在不同日期死亡并钙化[12]，[13]，[14]。

一些资料报道，腓特烈皇帝利用像斯格特这样的学者作为使者，前往像阿尔-卡米尔这样的阿拉伯统治者那里进行外交和学术交流，因为他懂阿拉伯语，并且他甚至在1228-29年的第六次十字军东征期间将斯格特带到了圣地[2]，[15]。

1979年诺贝尔物理学奖得主阿卜杜斯·萨拉姆在其获奖演讲中声称，大约1231年，斯格特在访问萨莱诺医学院时，与丹麦医生亨里克·哈佩斯特朗进行了交流，后者后来成为国王埃里克（四世）普洛彭宁的宫廷医生[16]。这次演讲作为科学知识转移和发展中世界在全球科学史中重要角色的历史隐喻。

Scots的著作大部分未完成，主要涉及占星术、炼金术和“魔法”，但也包括气象学、音乐以及各种专门性质的评注。艾尔伯图斯·麦格努斯（亚伯拉罕·阿德里安·艾伯特大帝）对他的著作提出了一些批评；罗吉尔·培根则给予了一些赞扬和一些辱骂（但很少有人感激他们的债主）。他的巨著，即他的Liber Introductorius maior in astrologiam（“占星术入门大全”），分为三个部分：

1. Liber quatuor distinctionum（“四区分之书”）
2. Liber particularis（“奇书”），与De mirabilibus mundi（“世界奇观”）
3. Liber physiognomiae（“相术书”）

注意，约翰内斯·开普勒的“天体音乐”概念实际上通过斯格特可追溯至毕达哥拉斯和Ibn Arabī。它建立了一条历史线索，将早期宇宙学天文学与现代被称为orbital resonances的天文现象研究联系起来[17]。

尽管在1227年左右受到教皇当局的好评，斯格特还是获得了魔术师或巫师的邪恶名声，并在但丁·阿利吉耶里的史诗The Divine Comedy中被判入地狱，直到很久以后才在沃尔特·司各特爵士的诗Lay of the Last Minstrel中被“拯救”。

Michael Scot (or in latinized form Michael Scotus) is a figure of both history and legend making him elusive to discern. Although believed to have come from the area bordering Northern England and Southern Scotland, doubts on his origins had been cast, since in 1223, he declined the position of Archbishop of Cashel in Ireland by claiming that he was ignorant of Gaelic. However, the use of Gaelic is not widespread in Southern Scotland (as opposed to the North), and given that Scot had broken the barrier of several languages with no impediment to his functions, this claim may have been exaggerated as an excuse to refuse the offer. In a letter to Stephen Langton dated in 1227, Pope Honorius III described Michael as ardently devoted to letters and science from boyhood up . Thorndike infers him as a Fatherless boy raised by his uncle. Sir Walter Scott identified him with the Sir Michael Scot of Balwearie, sent in 1290 on a special mission to Norway, but this is rejected by most historians. However, a connection to minor nobility is not ruled out given the cost of education at that time. His education allegedly begins at the cathedral school of Durham and includes Oxford and the University of Paris where he studied Mathematics, Astrology (which included Astronomy), Alchemy and Medicine.

The earliest documented record of his life and work is dated 18 August 1217 in Toledo Spain, where Michael Scot completed the translation from Arabic into Latin of al-Bitruji's Alpetragius the first work to present a non-Ptolemaic astronomical system. Michael was part of the Toledan school of Translation, and assisted by Jewish scholars under the direction of the Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de la Rada who played a key role in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa against the Muslim Almohads in 1212. This school had already hosted famous translators such as Gherard of Cremona (1114-1187) in the previous century.

A recent study [12] based on a passage written by Michael Scot on multiple rainbows, a phenomena only understood by modern physics and recent observations, suggests that Michael Scot may have been in contact with the Tuareg in the Sahara desert.

By 1227-8, Michael Scot and Leonardo Fibonacci were both in the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194-1250), ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Both would play their part in transmitting much of the scientific knowledge of the Muslims (mainly from Moorish Spain) into Europe (mainly Italy and Sicily), thereby planting many of the seeds of the scientific developments surrounding the Italian Renaissance. Scot is said to have been an imperial tutor but manuscripts give him the title of "astrologer". Scot had written a number of books but his most significant contributions are through other people and related to his work on translations. The second version of Leonardo Fibonacci's famous book on mathematics, Liber Abaci, was dedicated to Michael Scot in 1227. The school of Toledo had made translations of the works of Al-Khwarizmi and perhaps even those of Abu Kamil. Leonardo used them substantially for this Liber Abaci. It has been suggested that Michael Scot might have even played an indirect role in the presentation of the Fibonacci sequence. Scot's translations of Historia animalium, a zoological natural history text by Aristotle with commentaries by Ibn Rushd (Averroes), would help Frederick write his own famous book on falconry. This book, published in 1240 as De Arte Venandi cum Avibu ("The Art of Hunting with Birds"), is considered to be one of the earliest studies on bird behaviour and the first work known to include illustrations of birds.

Frederick sent Scot to communicate his translations and other scholarly works at prominent European Universities including Oxford where Scot met a young Roger Bacon. Scot also explored the Lipari islands, attempting to understand, in alchemical terms, the now realized connection between volcanic activity and the presence of gold. For example, it is known that the California Gold rush of 1849 was prompted by the outcome of such volcanic activity. Another recent article posits that Michael Scot with his skills in measures, calculations and alchemy had a significant behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the Augustalis gold coin introduced by Frederick II [13]

The importance of Frederick's court may have been exaggerated by some (for example, [2] and [5]). Nevertheless Frederick II authorized the first autopsies over the protests of the Roman Catholic church, as better knowledge of the human anatomy was vital for the improvement of medicine. In 1543, the same year that Copernicus wrote his treatise on Astronomy De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), Andreas Vesalius wrote his treatise on anatomy De Humani Corporis Fabrica ("On the structure of the human body"). Human dissections had revealed many anatomical errors by the ancient Greek physician Galen. This and other threads of scientific discovery can be traced to Frederick's court. During the "dark ages", the issue was not entirely the unavailability of books, many of which had been destroyed during the fall of the Roman Empire. The very "scientific culture" surrounding these books had been forgotten. However, Muslim scholarship had retained a better collective memory of the works of the ancient Greeks and other cultures, and Michael Scot played a connecting role in bringing this knowledge into Europe. Scot's own contributions have both been obscure and misunderstood in part because he lived in an time where science, superstition, religion and belief in magic coexisted together in a messy undisciplined body of thought, a "prehistory" of science. For example, modern-day notions of what is called Astrology and Astronomy were fused together at that time (and even in Kepler's time) in one body of thought called "Astrology". Nonetheless, Scot was observant. His very meticulous description in Latin concerning the medical case of "Mary of Bologna" dismissed as a "calcified fibroid tumor", was realized in the 1970s to be the description of a very rare case of miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion", not followed by immediate expulsion, of twin embryos, dead at different dates and calcified [12], [13], [14].

Some sources report that Emperor Frederick used scholars like Michael Scot as messengers to Arab rulers like Al-Kamil for diplomatic and scholarly exchanges because of his knowledge of Arabic, and, that he even brought Michael Scot to the Holy Land during the Sixth Crusade in 1228-29 [2], [15].

The 1979 Physics Nobel laureate Abdus Salam claimed in his acceptance speech that while visiting the medical school at Salerno around 1231, Michael Scot interacted with the Danish physician Henrik Harpestraeng, later to become court physician of King Erik (IV) Plovpenning[16]. This speech serves as a historical metaphor for scientific knowledge transfer and the essential role of the developing world in the history of global science.

Scots works, largely unfinished, dealt principally with Astrology, Alchemy and "magic" but also included meteorology, music and various commentaries of a specialized nature. Some censure was passed upon his writings by Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great); some praise and some abuse from Roger Bacon (but few are grateful to their creditors). His magnum opus, his Liber Introductorius maior in astrologiam ("Great Book on the introduction to Astrology"), is divided into three sections:

1. Liber quatuor distinctionum ("Book of four distinctions")
2. Liber particularis ("Singular Book"), with the De mirabilibus mundi ("Marvels of the world")
3. Liber physiognomiae ("Book of physiognomy")

Note that the concept of the "Music of the Spheres" by Johannes Kepler actually traces back to Pythagoras and Ibn Arabī through Michael Scot. It establishes a historical thread connecting early cosmological astronomy to the modern study of astronomical phenomena known as orbital resonances [17].

Although well viewed by the papal authorities around 1227, Scot would acquire the sinister reputation of a magician or wizard and would be condemned to the inferno in Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy only to be "rescued" much later on in Sir Walter Scott's poem Lay of the Last Minstrel.