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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Full of good stuff but a little long, 18 Aug 2009
Many myths about science and religion are commonplace in our society. Repeated endlessly, often without any special malice, but equally often as anti-Christian polemic, they have become an unquestioned truth about how our world came into being. In these myths, science arose in a primitive form in ancient times, and was then forgotten during the middle ages. At the renaissance Greek science was rediscovered, the medieval world rejected, and out of the intellectual ferment that resulted came the end of the medieval Catholic church, the beginnings of Protestantism, and the start of modern science with Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. The trial of the latter before the Inquisition exemplifies the way in which the medieval church sought to suppress any science that cast doubt on the bible, according to this theory.
James Hannam is a historian of science with a special interest in the medieval period. He's concerned about the quantity of myths circulating on his chosen subject. So, starting around 1000 AD, and running up to Galileo, each chapter focuses on a number of figures who made scientific advances. Each character gets a biography -- all these are very readable -- and full of interest. Many of them were known to me only as names, if that.
He talks about how each related to the medieval world, and especially to the church, which seems to have held the same sort of role it did today. Yes you could get punished for heresy; but in reality for a scholar you really had to try hard. Your chances of being prosecuted were much less than if today you utter a "racist" remark at some university, for instance.
The church was very keen on promoting learning, since it made them look good; and the new universities ensured freedom of speech by playing off the nobility against the pushier clerics. Even Galileo got away with pretty much anything until he alienated his supporters (the Jesuits) and then took the mick out of the Pope personally.
The renaissance, so very important in every other area, was something of a backward step for science. Because it focused on recovering ancient authors and ignoring the middle ages, it discarded medieval work on the limitations of Aristotle. Both Aristotle and Galen enjoyed an unjustified vogue during this period in consequence. This is the sort of information that shows how what we all know is in fact a bit of a myth. But Hannam is not a revisionist; merely an expert talking about his chosen field, which is one that most of us know little about.
The book is aimed at the general educated reader, but well footnoted. It's pretty long, the text being over 300 pages. But because it falls naturally into episodes, it might be the sort of book for bedtime, where you read a few pages and then do the same tomorrow. It's full of little gems like the invention of spectacles in Italy in the middle ages. The only problem is that you might want to keep reading!
If you are interested in the history of science and have always presumed the Middle Ages was a period of nothing, then you need this book. Galileo is indeed the founder of modern science; but without this background, much of what he did and was will remain incomprehensible to you.
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gem of a book, 4 Aug 2009
Few subjects may confuse or create more controversies than "science and religion". It doesn't help much that the Medieval Period more often than not still is called the Dark Ages.
The result is a silly series of myths and misunderstandings. I have on several occasions thrown my hands up in despair when people refuses to accept that no serious scientist (or natural philosopher as it was called in those days) in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat or was persecuted by The Church for their science. Or that anything of value really happened between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.
The myths perpetuated in the 19th century by people like Draper and White surface also in bestsellers by Carl Sagan, Daniel Boorstin, William Manchester and Charles Freeman to name a few.
Even if historians of science like Lindberg and Numbers long have shown that Draper and White rarely get it right, and e.g. Grant has described the positive effects of the Medieval Age on western rationality, James Hannam gives it all an illuminating and sometimes amusing spin.
"God's Philosophers" combines a thorough knowledge of the period with an engaging readability. Persons and politics are made alive, from the early middle ages to the various minor renaissances and recoverings of ancient learning, especially in the Twelfth Century.
The story is well told about how Aristotle's pagan science was christianised and why Oxford philosophers like Grosseteste, Bacon and Ockham were so influential. As well as the efforts to correct the errors of Aristotle by the so called Merton Calculators.
Hannam also gives us a pretty good idea why people came to dismiss the period. The agendas of the 15th and 16th century humanists and reformators were not exactly to praise the recent past.
Whether you're interested in why human dissections were allowed in the Medieval World (as opposed to in the Roman and Arabic), Copernicus and Galilei, or The Legacy of Medieval Science in general, this is a gem of a book.
Like Newton we are still very much standing on the shoulders of the medieval giants.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
God's Philosophers, 12 Aug 2009
A great book, written in simple enough terms that the average educated person would understand and enjoy,if interested in History, and yet intellectual enough to rank as a serious historical treaty. Highly recommended !
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