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God's Philosophers

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I worry that a book with both "philosophers" and "medieval" in its title will elicit blank faces among potential readers. It would be a shame if it did; for Hannam, a Ph.D. historian of science with degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, knows how to write readable history -- and the tale he tells is truly fascinating.

This book is the latest entry in a controversy with a history of its own. Hannam speaks of the myth that "there was no science worth mentioning in the Middle Ages," and "the Church held back what meagre advances were made." These beliefs originated as late as the 19th century with Thomas Henry Huxley, John William Draper, and Andrew Dickson White, who tried to paint religion as the enemy of science. Their story has been told often; Hannam himself has blogged on it.

A.D. White's part is particularly unfortunate, in that he produced a highly influential, heavily footnoted, apparently scholarly tome on the historic warfare between science and religion. Hannam assesses his work this way:

"Anyone who checks his references will wonder how he could have maintained his opinions if he had read as much as he claimed to have done."

Other recent historians have treated White less gently than that.

Hannam situates these myths in historical context:

"The denigration of the Middle Ages began as long ago as the sixteenth century, when humanists, the intellectual trendsetters of the time, started to champion classical Greek and Roman literature. They cast aside medieval scholarship on the grounds that it was convoluted and written in `barbaric' Latin. So people stopped reading and studying it.... The waters were muddied further by ... Protestant writers not to give an ounce of credit to Catholics. It suited them to maintain that nothing of value had been taught at universities before the Reformation."

This is no simplistic apologetic for Christianity as the root of scientific thinking. Hannam summarizes the church's relationship with natural philosophy as one of "creative tension." Nevertheless it's impossible not to notice who led the way in medieval natural philosophy:
- A mathematician Pope at the turn of the last millennium.
- A monk in 1092 who used an astrolabe to construct the lunar calendar.
- St. Anselm and Peter Abelard, clerics who elevated the role of reason and logic in philosophy and theology.
- Cathedral school scholars who taught that "God is loving and consistent rather than capricious and arbitrary" paving the way for the study of a consistently operating world of nature.
- The universities, products of the Church.
- The church's condemnation of certain (not all) Aristotelian dogmas, which - opened the door for experimental study rather restricting natural philosophy to Aristotle's pure reasoning.
- A Polish clergyman, Copernicus, who challenged Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the heavens.

I could go on, but you get the point. The tension between religion and natural philosophy was a creative one that led to new technologies (improved plows, the stirrup, clocks, the compass, eyeglasses, mills, and more), new theories (impetus/momentum, theories of acceleration), new observational tools (observatories, telescopes), and new institutions of learning (cathedral schools and universities).

And as the author states in his conclusion, it also produced the metaphysical cornerstone for modern science:

"We take it for granted and we do not worry about why people began studying nature in the first place....

"To understand why science was attractive even before it could demonstrate its remarkable success in explaining the universe, it is necessary to look at things from a medieval point of view. The starting point for all natural philosophy in the Middle Ages was that nature had been created by God. This made it a legitimate area of study because through nature, man could learn about its creator. Medieval scholars thought that nature followed the rules that God had ordained for it. Because God was consistent and not capricious, these natural laws were constant and worth scrutinising. However, these scholars rejected Aristotle's contention that the laws of nature were bound by necessity. God was not constrained by what Aristotle thought. The only way to find out which laws God had decided on was by the use of experience and observation. The motivations and justification of medieval natural philosophers were carried over almost unchanged by the pioneers of modern science."

I am not an expert in medieval philosophy, but I think there is little risk in being confident in what Hannam has to say. (This is no scholarly fraud, á la A.D. White.) It's a straightforward account of the development of important ideas and inventions, in the context of a continent dominated by Christian thinking. One segment of the story does get convoluted: Galileo gets a full three chapters. Nevertheless the conclusion is clear: the roots of modern science go down deep into Christian culture, theology, and practice.

This book is a gentle, calm, and accessible overview of what history really says about the emergence of science. Hannam enjoys challenging the all-too-common and erroneous narratives we receive from two bit summaries of the Middle Ages. And his evident delight is contagious. A delightful read for anyone interested in real history.

A great book overall. Yet again the Middles Ages is shown to be an era of great technological, economic, and cultural growth and not one of stagnation. This book clearly shows why the term "Dark Ages" is being tossed on the ash heap of history and that Christianity went hand in hand with science and not against it. James Hannam does a wonderful job in highlighting and explaining the many accomplishments of the Natural Philosophers of this era. I also like how he shows how the history of the era has been greatly distorted due to bias from both Humanists and by the Protestant Reformations. However, I wish he would have gotten into how more modern historians have contributed to the myth of the "Dark Ages". Hannam writes very fairly about the Middle Ages and closely mirrors the writings of David Lindberg, but does not comes as strong as say Edward Grant and Rodney Stark. I only disagreed with Mr. Hannam statements on a few tiny issues in the book, but all related to issues outside of the main topic of Natural Philosophy. Overall I highly recommended this book, certainly a must read for anyone who wants to find out what really happened during the Middle Ages and how modern science began.

This book is an excellent discovery. Thanks to previous reviewers on here who recommended it. Having just read it, is my turn to recommend it now.

There are several reasons to recommend this book. Firstly it is a good historical drama with a rich cast of interesting characters and contexts. The author is a good narrator and takes us through the stories briskly and thoroughly. He gives enough detail to make the point, and if you need further evidence there is a useful reference list as well.

Secondly this book is good at separating the events that happened during the middle ages from the myths and pejorative labels that have been attached to the middle ages by later observers for their own purposes. This book shows that there were never many believers in a flat earth. This book shows that the Christian milieu provided a fertile growing ground for science and was not opposed to science. Conflicts between a literal reading of the bible and science were resolved sensibly and quickly.

The people living in the middle ages did not know they were in the middle of anything. They were humans with their own strengths and weaknesses trying to make sense of the world they found themselves in. They struggled with this as well as they could do and made huge intellectual and technological progress, which we in turn have built on. This book is a glorious story of people and how they used knowledge to better their understanding of the world. It is a glorious example of a historian writing to explore and understand how the world appeared to his subjects, rather than to impose his modern views on a past people.

This book increases our respect for the great medieval scholars and their work, and its role in helping us to get to where we are now. It is a great rehabilitation exercise on an often unjustly mocked period of history. I can recommend it highly to other readers.

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.

Science and philosophy, as any human endeavour, have demonstrated a persistent bias by often making their own contributions more important by being very selective in the sources they refer to. This bias, as has been described by the American Philosopher of Technology Don Ihde, has downplayed the importance of the craftsmen in the development of contemporary science, by the break-through innovations that were made in the European Middle Ages, which is being increasingly recognised as one of the most technologically advanced societies that humankind had known up to then.

James Hannam extends the due credits of the Middle Ages to the natural philosphers and craftspeople who paved the way for the breakthroughs of Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and so on. Be prepared to add a number of new grand names of scientific discovery that you probably never heard of previously!

The book is very readable, and of deep interest for anyone who is interested in the history of science.

Hannam is a truly rare breed of scholar: he is both a master of his subject matter and he is
able to express the intricacies of the subject to the readers, educate the laymen with a
writing style that is as informative as it is engaging.

From explaining the significance of the most esoteric philosophies of the era, to shedding light
on figures and personages to which modern science owes a great debt, Hannam does it all with
equal parts panache and academic rigor.

A must have!

An excellent, fun to read, overview of the parallel development of faith and reason through medieval times. As a scientist who is also a Christian, I appreciated the straightforward way the different "sides" were articulated and (at least attempted to be) reconciled. As someone who had a vague knowledge of the development of philosophical thought, I found it very interesting to see the process laid out in a comprehensible way (after trying to read some of the incomprehensible, mind-twisting writings of the 12th century)!

I believe the book is very helpful in allowing the reader to see the various philosophers points of view and, eventually, find their own "comfortable" view clearly outlined - 1000 years before the reader even had the thought! At least, that's the feeling I had as I read the book. The author has clearly integrated the "central arguments" of influential philosophers in a chronological fashion, leading nicely into current world views. This book emphasizes the importance of Liberal Arts education and having an overview of your discipline, especially as it fits into its own "niche" in relation to other disciplines. It also demonstrates the statement in Ecclesiastes 1:9 "There's nothing new under the sun".

For far too long we have ignored, denigrated or otherwise misrepresented the very considerable achievents of [largely] Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, and their enormous contribution to the development of science. The notion - promoted by the Victorians TH Huxley, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White - that there has generally been a 'warfare' between science and religion throughout history, is both a myth and a calumny against both the Church and the genuine achievements of some outstanding thinkers and practical early scientists. James Hannam has done a useful, indeed a splendid, job in rescuing those achievements and debunking the myths. The book is based on research he did for his Cambridge PhD in the history of science.

For the average well-read layman, there will be many here whose names and achievements were unknown or under-appreciated. Hannam writes in an engaging and direct style. His sentences are short [shorter than the measured, leisurely prose that I generally prefer, and occasionally suggestive of breathlessness]; but his judgements are usually sound and his choice of words telling. Only occasionally did I find myself in disagreement with him. On page 341, for example, he quotes from Newton's Preface to the second [1713] edition of the Principia a passage about the impotence of blind necessity to produce biodiversity. He adds: "It would take Charles Darwin ... to prove Newton wrong." With the greatest respect to Dr. Hannam, I think he is seriously mistaken on this point.

Nonetheless, the book is a considerable achievement and a great read. It's chief virtue is that it fills in a huge chunk that was missing from most histories of human progress, and rights the many wrongs that 'rationalist' spin has [successfully] imposed on our estimate of a period which was far more creative than is generally realised.
Not the least of the author's achievements is to correct the common errors that abound about Galileo's dealings with the Church. Dr. Hannam will be known to some for creating the excellent online resource 'Bede's Library' and for his introductory chapter to JP Holding's 'Shattering the Christ Myth'. I hope we shall hear a lot more from him in the future.

This book will disappoint any reader who has even some knowledge of the middle ages. Its style is often annoyingly informal, and there are some curious judgmental interruptions. My guess is that the author is Catholic -- which is not a condemnation, but simply to show that he does not in any way hide ideology from historical explanation. In fact, taking seriously the Catholic historiography of science of Pierre Duhem, for example, is something I think is a rather good idea. But this author does so simplistically.

Still, the subject is important and should serve to correct those who deny the importance of medieval science. I would not hesitate to give this book to a young teenager interested in science or history, or indeed to anyone who shows ignorance of medieval science. This might get them interested in reading more nuanced, serious works on the topic.