God's Philosophers [Hardcover]

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.

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