scipio_africanus's review against another edition
5.0
It has always annoyed me when I've heard someone denigrate the thinkers of the middle ages as idiots or backwards.
This book eloquently and thoroughly puts that ignorance to rest by documenting how the thinkers of the middle ages laid the foundations of modern science, and without their hunger for knowledge and love for God, we would not be where we are today.
A very interesting read. Learned alot about the history of knowledge.
This book eloquently and thoroughly puts that ignorance to rest by documenting how the thinkers of the middle ages laid the foundations of modern science, and without their hunger for knowledge and love for God, we would not be where we are today.
A very interesting read. Learned alot about the history of knowledge.
davehershey's review against another edition
4.0
This is a highly readable book about the foundations of modern science in the medieval era. Anyone interested in the subject should read this; it is not written for specialists or experts but for popular audiences.
There have been lots of mythologies built up around the so-called “Dark Ages” or “Middle Ages.” Most of these were inventions of the Renaissance and later when, in love with the ancient world, they sought to downplay any advances in the intervening 1,000 years of Christendom. There were even Protestant Reformers who contributed to this myth in an effort to take shots at Roman Catholics.
Hannam shows that the roots of modern science were actually found in the Medieval Era. European universities were independent enough to give people space to study and the Christian metaphysical assumption that God created a world that made sense and can be observed gave reason to study nature.
Just one example is that Aristotle, who always loomed large, taught that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Hannam shows how this idea was already questioned by John Philoponus in the 500s and by the time of Galileo, just about every natural philosopher knew Aristotle was wrong.
Not only does calling times merely “middle” ages or worse “dark” ages, calling an era the time of “scientific revolution” is a bit hyperbolic. Hannam argues we could call any century from the 12th to the 20th a time of scientific revolution. For this reason, rather than looking at those medieval natural philosophers as having nothing to offer, we should be grateful for the work they did that paved the way for modern science.
There have been lots of mythologies built up around the so-called “Dark Ages” or “Middle Ages.” Most of these were inventions of the Renaissance and later when, in love with the ancient world, they sought to downplay any advances in the intervening 1,000 years of Christendom. There were even Protestant Reformers who contributed to this myth in an effort to take shots at Roman Catholics.
Hannam shows that the roots of modern science were actually found in the Medieval Era. European universities were independent enough to give people space to study and the Christian metaphysical assumption that God created a world that made sense and can be observed gave reason to study nature.
Just one example is that Aristotle, who always loomed large, taught that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Hannam shows how this idea was already questioned by John Philoponus in the 500s and by the time of Galileo, just about every natural philosopher knew Aristotle was wrong.
Not only does calling times merely “middle” ages or worse “dark” ages, calling an era the time of “scientific revolution” is a bit hyperbolic. Hannam argues we could call any century from the 12th to the 20th a time of scientific revolution. For this reason, rather than looking at those medieval natural philosophers as having nothing to offer, we should be grateful for the work they did that paved the way for modern science.
danielad's review against another edition
5.0
God's Philosophers is a well written introduction to medieval natural philosophy. Throughout, Hannam argues that 'science' did not emerge from nowhere with Copernicus or Galileo. Rather, there is a long history of medieval natural philosophy that predates the so-called scientific-revolution and made it possible.
Being something of a fan of medieval philosophy myself, I can't help but endorse Hannam's thesis, not only because I agree with it, but also because it's right (haha).
Something interesting Hannam points out: far from advancing natural philosophy, the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth century probably held it back a bit. By valuing the ancients over and above the scholastics, the humanists took Aristotle and Plato to be more authoritative than Oresme and Buridan. As a result, natural philosophers, in a certain sense, had to redo what thinkers of the previous two centuries had already done. They had to show once again that Aristotle and Plato were not final authorities on all 'scientific' matters. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but I've never heard this argument before.
In all, I'd recommend this book to anyone who takes science or the history of science seriously. It certainly puts the lie to the (obviously false) thesis that science only became possible with the demise of religion.
Being something of a fan of medieval philosophy myself, I can't help but endorse Hannam's thesis, not only because I agree with it, but also because it's right (haha).
Something interesting Hannam points out: far from advancing natural philosophy, the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth century probably held it back a bit. By valuing the ancients over and above the scholastics, the humanists took Aristotle and Plato to be more authoritative than Oresme and Buridan. As a result, natural philosophers, in a certain sense, had to redo what thinkers of the previous two centuries had already done. They had to show once again that Aristotle and Plato were not final authorities on all 'scientific' matters. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but I've never heard this argument before.
In all, I'd recommend this book to anyone who takes science or the history of science seriously. It certainly puts the lie to the (obviously false) thesis that science only became possible with the demise of religion.
johntra44's review against another edition
5.0
Hannam has did a blow to the medieval myths and clearly gave context to how the myths formed and why most medieval myths were actually the inverse of the actual reality.
Medieval world has been attacked for too long that I think the book is needed to correct our misunderstanding of this poorly attacked profound era.
Medieval world has been attacked for too long that I think the book is needed to correct our misunderstanding of this poorly attacked profound era.
rixx's review against another edition
2.0
This book came recommended by Seb Falk in the bibliography of The Light Ages, and it's also on the reading list of /r/askHistorians, which I trust a lot. I found this book harder to like – who writes sentences like “when the barbarian tribes took over or destroyed the Roman infrastructure” in this century? It was long-winded and seemed to alternate between being jovial and trying for jokes, and going for a more professorial style. Not only the style was uneven: I also felt like the assumed prior knowledge fluctuated a lot, and was sometimes left out entirely, and then filled in with excrutiating care at other times.
The storytelling, such as it is, often jumps around, is light on citations and vague in a way that probably reflects the book's intended readers, but that is certainly not necessary even when writing to a lay audience. I didn't manage to finish the book. In its defense though, it does contain a lot of facts, and when I started writing my detailed notes, I got up to 1.5k words for about half of the part of the book that I read, until I decided that it wasn't worth it after all.
The storytelling, such as it is, often jumps around, is light on citations and vague in a way that probably reflects the book's intended readers, but that is certainly not necessary even when writing to a lay audience. I didn't manage to finish the book. In its defense though, it does contain a lot of facts, and when I started writing my detailed notes, I got up to 1.5k words for about half of the part of the book that I read, until I decided that it wasn't worth it after all.
arthuriana's review against another edition
4.0
this was a VERY GOOD history book. sensationalistic, one might say, but a.) it's for all the right reasons and b.) it never made any pretensions at targeting seasoned academics and is very clearly intended for the lay reader.*
one thing i never expected with this book is that it made me genuinely laugh more than once — which speaks to its virtues, i'd say! overall: very lovely and quite underrated, plus it's doing the Lord's work (heh) in dispelling the truly ugly myth of the so-called 'dark ages' all the while delivery its lessons in very accessible and highly engaging prose!
*that said, it is VERY scholarly: there's an exhaustive index, copious endnotes, and a very interesting suggested reading guide as well as meticulous references.
one thing i never expected with this book is that it made me genuinely laugh more than once — which speaks to its virtues, i'd say! overall: very lovely and quite underrated, plus it's doing the Lord's work (heh) in dispelling the truly ugly myth of the so-called 'dark ages' all the while delivery its lessons in very accessible and highly engaging prose!
*that said, it is VERY scholarly: there's an exhaustive index, copious endnotes, and a very interesting suggested reading guide as well as meticulous references.
kateofmind's review against another edition
3.0
Full review is < Here.
In brief, there is some fascinating information in this book, and the bibliography points to years of more in-depth reading for the type so disposed (I am that type). Hannam has uncovered a myriad of nuggets of knowledge gleaned from thousands of pages of dreary and torturous scholasticism (the practice of laboriously reasoning one's way to artificially reconciling Aristotle et al with Christian doctrine and scripture) that prefigure the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance and beyond. Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo weren't the first to establish earth's actual position in the heavens, just to prove it so exhaustively, etc.
This would all be fine, but there is kind of an ugly undertone to this book, at least as I took it. I felt hectored by the author to be grateful to the Catholic Church for forcing all that scholasticism to take the place of honest inquiry, even before I got to the passage where Hannam declares that the humanists who sought to recover and amplify the nearly-lost writings of antiquity were "incorrigible reactionaries" who wanted to return to an imaginary past. Because they didn't spend their lives paging through all those arguments about God and Aristotle to sift out the odd germ of actual knowledge they were bad guys?
Again, it's not a bad book and a lot of the information in it is illuminating and stimulated my curiosity about some nearly-forgotten figures in medieval learning, but I still found its tone a rather rough row to hoe.
In brief, there is some fascinating information in this book, and the bibliography points to years of more in-depth reading for the type so disposed (I am that type). Hannam has uncovered a myriad of nuggets of knowledge gleaned from thousands of pages of dreary and torturous scholasticism (the practice of laboriously reasoning one's way to artificially reconciling Aristotle et al with Christian doctrine and scripture) that prefigure the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance and beyond. Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo weren't the first to establish earth's actual position in the heavens, just to prove it so exhaustively, etc.
This would all be fine, but there is kind of an ugly undertone to this book, at least as I took it. I felt hectored by the author to be grateful to the Catholic Church for forcing all that scholasticism to take the place of honest inquiry, even before I got to the passage where Hannam declares that the humanists who sought to recover and amplify the nearly-lost writings of antiquity were "incorrigible reactionaries" who wanted to return to an imaginary past. Because they didn't spend their lives paging through all those arguments about God and Aristotle to sift out the odd germ of actual knowledge they were bad guys?
Again, it's not a bad book and a lot of the information in it is illuminating and stimulated my curiosity about some nearly-forgotten figures in medieval learning, but I still found its tone a rather rough row to hoe.
kmdra06's review against another edition
3.0
A book with a simple thesis: science didn’t take a nap between Rome and Galileo, that more than supports it. The history suffers from its whirlwind nature and ad hoc organizational nature; at times reading like a list of “told you so’s.”