Customer Reviews

The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450

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I read the Beginnings of Western Sceince as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I had the extreme priviledge of taking two history of science courses from the author, who is also an absolutely outstanding professor. (And also one of the two or three most knowledgeable people in the world in the history of medieval science) This is by far the most comprehensive text on the history of ancient and medieval science that is out there. You might not believe it, but there aren't even a lot of other texts that cover half of what is discussed here period, let alone any that are this polished and concise. This book not only covers the development of western science from ancient times throught the Middle Ages, but it also considers the religious, and philosophical roots of this development. This book is masterfully written in that it provides a tremendous amount of detail, and yet is accessible to anyone that is an educated and interested reader. I cannot recommend this text highly enough.

Also Recommended: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn discusses the importance of history and its relationship to science, the changing views of how historians view past scientific achievements, the role of scientific method in science, and the nature and foundations of scientific revolutions.

I read this book as a student for my History of Scientific Thought Class. This text was an excellent addition to the course work that included discussions about scientific thinking, discovery and revolutions, Greek philosophy and nature, Medieval cosmology and it's assimilation of Plato and Aristotle. Lindberg also pictured works of art that helped discuss the science and thinking of the times. The other texts that, as a class, were discussed along with Lindberg were Leonard Schlain's Art and Physics and Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers and Thomas Kuhn's THe Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

This is a first rate survey of Western science from the Classical period to the eve of the Scientific Revolution. Arranged chronologically, Lindberg summarizes an immense amount of scholarly literature in a very well written text. Lindberg makes a consistent and successful effort to avoid anachronistically looking back at developments of the point of view the emergence of modern science. History of science is presented here with a strong effort to situate it in the context of contemporary intellectual and general history. Lindberg deals also with some historiographic issues related to prior interpretations of history of science. This is all quite difficult to do in a survey book and Lindberg carries this off very, very well. Each chronological period has a discussion of major developments and enough general history to make the context intelligible. Topics of greatest significance, such as Aristotle's system or Medieval physics, get excellent coverage. Some persistent themes are the importance of the Aristotelian system, the interaction between Platonic and Aristotelian ideas, the complex interaction between the Classical heritage and Christianity, the particular importance of the Islamic world as the heir and transmitter of Classical knowledge, and the importance of mathematical concepts. Lindberg does very well as showing the achievements of Classical and Medieval science while discussing why its underlying assumptions were different from the modern science that emerges in the 17th century. The footnotes and bibliography are excellent and constructed with an eye to providing a good guide into the literature for interested readers. This book is a real nice combination of informed scholarship and pedagogy.

I had to read this book because I'm currently taking a history of science class taught by the author at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and I just want to say it's excellent. It is clear, concise and (best of all from a student's point of view) not boring. It teaches you so much about looking at things in context. This is a great book from a great professor.

David Lindberg has without doubt successfully accomplished what he endeavored to do: write an excellent survey of the history of science in the ancient world and the Middle Ages. In fact, his was the only book I could find out there that covered this topic well -- it is a small corner of an esoteric field, to be sure, but an immensely interesting one nonetheless!

Lindberg's book is beautiful in its writing, far-reaching in its expanse, and cohesive in its coverage of the themes of the history of science. He writes in a manner that is scholarly yet friendly, even casual at times. His brush is a broad one the paints the big picture of how the ancient thinkers (the Greeks in particular, and to a lesser extent the Babylonians and the Romans) and the medieval philosophers -- both Christian and Muslim -- viewed the natural world around them. Lindberg does everyone justice, insisting time and again -- as he should -- that "science" thousands of years ago should not be compared to what we think of as "science" today, if only because the ancient and medieval thinkers asked questions about their world that were so fundamentally different from the ones we ask about ours. The book particularly shines when discussing Aristotle, the Muslim scholars and the Scholastics, true high points in the book. Lindberg successfully connects and relates the overarching themes in the history of science, making the book an immensely interesting and comprehensible work.

Though in painting with broad strokes Lindberg paints a fantastic big picture, in doing so he sacrifices detail. For example, the book, except for a few notable instances, is rather devoid of details about individual thinkers, and the reader learns little about their lives or the world in which they lived. In addition, the book is organized around themes within the history of science, and so little attention is paid to chronology, leaving the reader at times to flounder without direction in the stream of history. Understandably, if these issues had been addressed, then the book would have been massive, and would have lost its charm as the "big picture" survey of history of science that it is.

I have not come across a work that addresses the central problems of early history of science so marvelously as Lindberg's does. Incidentally, this book is complemented wonderfully by an audio course from the Teaching Company, "The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700," by Lawrence Principe. With these two works, you will feel fully immersed in scientific thinking of the time.

This is a very good book. While the book is a survey covering about 2000 years of science, I did not feel that I was getting only a brief glimpse of the story. Rather, I found the presentation to be very coherent and well focused. It covers not only Western Science of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but also much earlier Greek Science and how this shaped later Western Science. It covers the ideas concerning the cosmos, atoms, nature, mathematics, kinematics and medicine. This coverage is much more than just a description of the science mentioned above, but it also stresses how earlier scientific endeavors influenced that which followed. The book devotes a considerable amount of space to Islamic science, not only in the sense that preserved and commented on the earlier Greek science, but also covers the original contributions that were made.

I particularly liked the discussion of how the early Greek ideas of the cosmos evolved into the later ideas of the Renaissance and how the ideas of matter also evolved. There is also a nice discussion of the Astrolabe, including expanded drawings of its parts. The reader should be reminded, however, that the book only covers science up to about 1450, so there is no detailed discussion of the work of Copernicus, Gallelo or Newton, although all three are mentioned.

The writing is generally clear and written in a very accessible style - one that is quite suitable for a general reader as well as a specialist. The book contains 6 maps and over 100 drawings.

This book becomes essential for students, and anyone interested, to get a picture of the development of scientific thinking in Europe. Lindberg shows mastery in reasoning from the particular to the general and viceversa. Although the book focuses on western science, it does not forget to mention the great influences from the islamic world. This is a must-read in history of science.

I have read a number of publications by David Lindberg starting with his dissertation at U. Chicago. This book, like his other publications, is well wrttten, understandable and useful. I recommend this book to the scientific audience as a fine resource for us all. It brings together a great scholarly exposition of the history of modern science, which in large measure has European origins.

So far (I'm only half-way through) this book is very clear and direct. It covers the BEGINNINGS of science, so don't expect any discussion of Newton or anything recent. It only goes up to the 1500s. Obviously, then, a lot of the "science" is not very accurate. But the point of this book is not to learn science, but to learn the history of the study of science. If you're a PROFESSOR reading this review and considering using this book as a textbook, I suggest that you do what my professor did and give supplementary readings of primary sources (actual passages from Aristotle, Galen, etc.)

This is a good comprehensive overview of 'science' from prehistory to pre-Scientific Revolution though the content of the book is heavily weighted toward the medieval period. I found the coverage of the more ancient period to be much more fascinating compared to the more boring medieval period.

One thing I hoped to gain from this book is an understanding of pre-Copernican astronomy. While it is covered in some depth, I did not end up fully grasping the rather complex mechanisms of Ptolemy's celestial description. I think more figures would have been useful. Overall, I would prefer to have more in depth coverage of the details but I can't blame the book since that is not its intent.

On an aside, an interesting tidbit was mentioned by the author concerning Plato's Academy. I had learned that the Byzantine Emperor Justinian shut it down in 529 AD (read as oppressive Christian persecuting open minded pagans). However the author here points out that first of all the Academy was not continuously running from Plato to the 6th century but had been refounded in the 5th century and lasted till 560.

I really liked the last chapter of the book where he talks about historians have viewed science of the middle ages - is it continuous with the early modern period or is there a sharp divide when people really started doing something wholly different than what they were doing before? I wish the author would have brought up this theme more thoughout the book instead of briefly at the end.

The tone of the book is sympathetic to the Medieval culture and the Church by extension. He takes a very non-judgmental approach to the point where he is frequently asking his readers to not judge the culture of the past by our current standards. I don't mind the lesson once, but he repeates it ad nauseum.