God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, by James Hannam
We all have our hobby-horses. James Hannam’s is the abuse of the word ‘medieval’. Hats off. As I have written in this magazine before, using the term as shorthand for anything you consider cruel, arcane or barbarous (be it the Taliban, the hunt, the House of Lords, or whatever) is ignorant and unhistorical. If I had my way, all offenders would get a long spell in the village stocks.
In God’s Philosophers, Hannam has pursed his cheeks and attempted to puff away the common notion that nothing of scientific significance happened in Christendom between the fall of Rome and the birth of Galileo. Or, as he puts it, he wants to kill off the idea ‘that there was no science worth mentioning in the Middle Ages … [and] that the Church held back what meagre advances were made’.
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