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God's Philosophers: How the Medieval…
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God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (original 2009; edition 2010)

by James Hannam

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
6241037,231 (3.93)1 / 101
This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. "God's Philosophers" is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.… (more)
Member:cushlareads
Title:God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
Authors:James Hannam
Info:Icon Books Ltd (2010), Paperback, 448 pages
Collections:Your library, Read
Rating:****
Tags:/janet

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God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam (2009)

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Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
This is an excellent history of medieval science. I noticed that any Christian theology involved was carefully explained. ( )
  MarthaJeanne | May 24, 2021 |
Well written, interesting and informative. ( )
  ElentarriLT | Mar 24, 2020 |
It seems that I sometimes have and controversial and nonconformist taste in history books. I don’t generally like tabloid style, sensationalistic controversy for its own sake, especially if this is based on dubious assumptions or modern judgement- but sometimes controversy might spark my interest. One thing that attracted me to this book was the extreme polarization of opinion- the way that historians and interested laypeople seemed to love it, but many with secular humanists hated it. As a student of medieval history I have long known that the notion of all Medieval Europeans being backwards and stupid was a fallacy, so I was inclined to side with the author, and bought the book shortly after it first came out.

After nearly two years I finally got around to reading and finishing it. On the one hand God’s Philosophers is an accessible and necessary work. Necessary because it challenges popular views and misconceptions which still exist to this day, especially where the history of science and philosophy are concerned. Hannam demonstrates that it was in the Universities of Medieval Europe that natural philosophers, theologians and intellectuals made important discoveries and theorized, analyzed, and strove about the world around them in many subjects from astronomy to mathematics, physics to rationality. More importantly, especially to Hannam’s line of argument is that most of these important thinkers were churchmen.

The most common misconception that the author seeks to correct is that the church sought to suppress learning and rational inquiry. It may be based perhaps on a modern, humanistic understanding of reason which holds itself to be the antithesis of faith, and therefore incompatible. However, those who read anything of the scholastic thinkers of the 11th century onwards will realize that their definition of reason was different. It was not the enemy of faith, for they were men of faith, but rather a gift from God to help men. A creation based belief system told them the universe was ordered and adhered to certain laws, and so men could understand and interpret the creation and the world around them.

Of course there was conflict, especially when some scholars sought to use philosophy to challenge Orthodoxy or formulate beliefs deemed heretical. The paranoid heresy hunting church hounding innocent scientist is however not truthful or accurate picture of the time- a time in which a English blacksmith’s son by the name of Richard of Wallingford would in his closing years create one of the world’s first mechanical clocks, in Italy the first spectacles appeared, as well as many other inventions and innovations in agriculture, architecture and many other areas. So much for the supposed ‘intellectual stagnation’ of Medieval Europe which did not end until ‘the Renaissance’- in fact there was more than one Renaissance.

On the other side of the coin, there are some drawbacks to this work. Hannam is to my knowledge, a scientist first and foremost, not a historian. Hence he does seem to apply the preconceptions and attitudes of modern science and ‘progress’ to his work sometimes, and they do not always sit well. His view of medieval medicine is rather scathing, for instance, but does not seem entirely justified. At least, a medical historian at my University would not agree with his generalisation that all medicine of the time was useless and more likely to do harm than heal. To the contrary, there is some evidence that herbal remedies of past may have been effective.

Conversely, whilst having little good to say about medical practitioners and quacks, credit it given to some astrologers, alchemists and even occultists in spite of the dubious basis of their beliefs- even by the standards of the time. Also, I felt there was some bias against Creationism and Protestantism on the part of the author, which came through in the work, so the accusations of a Pro-Catholic slant may not be entirely unfounded.

Altogether, a useful and necessary work, though with some deficiencies, and perhaps suffering from one or two misconceptions itself.
( )
1 vote Medievalgirl | Oct 4, 2016 |
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. ( )
  KateSherrod | Aug 1, 2016 |
A fascinating debunking of the myth that the church held science back in the more than 1000 years between the fall of the Western Roman empire and Galileo.

In fact medieval philosophers pioneered the union between logic, mathematics and natural philosophy to understand the world as a revelation of God and the church had no problem with this so long as the boundary between philosophy and theology was respected. It was the Renaissance with its desire to return to classical models that nearly deprived of us advances in mechanics, physics, mathematics, and astronomy. ( )
  Robertgreaves | Sep 18, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
James Hannam is a good writer ..., but he allows his thesis to dominate to the extent that he distorts the findings of recent scholarship to help it fit. He has major problems with structuring a book and using his conceptual terms coherently and much of what he says is not supported by scholarship. His Catholicism often blinds him to the real difficulties in thinking independently when the punishment for heresy, however it was defined, was so brutal on earth and everlasting in hell. None of this detracts from “the good read” and the interesting information he provides about his heroes but this can hardly be called a book of high academic quality.
 
Hannam's thesis is that, by thinking critically, and by challenging classical authority, the natural philosophers of the medieval world prepared the way for modern science. He sees – Hannam is not alone in this – the history of medieval thought as a long and sometimes prickly conversation about Aristotle. The Church had its own problems with Aristotle, but concluded that he was broadly right, except when he was wrong, and philosophers should respect Aristotle except when his views clashed with Holy Writ.
 
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To understand why historians no longer feel comfortable with the term the 'Dark Ages', you only have to visit the British Museum in London to admire the treasure found at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk.
The most famous remark made by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was: 'If I have seen a little further then it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' - Introduction
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This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. "God's Philosophers" is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

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