The Light Ages: The surprising history of medieval science, by Seb Falk, won my heart in the first few minutes of his introduction by taking on one of my least favourite annoying stereotypes: the idea that to be a Christian (or to have any faith at all) means you are stupid and incurious. He opens by talking about the tweet thread popular historian and presenter Dan Snow posted in response to Steve Bannon’s 2017 assertion that he was going to “go medieval” on someone or other. Snow asked if Bannon might “raise a small unreliable army of ungovernable nobles and poorly equipped, conscripted peasants, and immediately get dysentry? Lack the most basic understanding of scientific method? Embrace quackery and astrology, and depend on an imagined deity to bring you victory?” I don’t remember that particular series of tweets, but I do recall unfollowing Snow around that time because I was tired of his sneering contempt for Christians, nicely exemplified in Falk’s example. Falk argues in his introduction that belief in God never prevented medieval people from curiosity about the mysteries of the universe, or of seeking to understand them. In order to explore this, he takes as a rough outline for his book the life of John Westwyk, a monk and astronomer from the 14th century.
This isn’t a biography of Westwyk. Instead, Falk links “medieval science” (he is careful not to use the term “scientist”, which didn’t emerge until the 19th century) to factors that had relevance for daily life, or at least regular life. There are chapters on time-keeping, medicine, astronomy, sea travel, university study etc. These chapters are then linked to Westwyk’s life, sometimes closely, often much more loosely. The chapter on the development of mechanical clocks might be my favourite of all, although I would not have guessed predicted that going in. Time-keeping really is a daily concern for all of us, and learning about time-keeping in any given period gives an insight into what the priorities and occupations of the day were. I also enjoyed his exploration of the astronomical calculations that allowed medieval people to not only work out that the earth was round, but to give a pretty close estimation of its actual size. (They did not in fact believe the earth was flat, despite later rumour). A lot of time is given over to the development and use of books and machinery that allowed for these complex calculations – a subject I always find impressive, since even with the whole of 21st century computing at my fingertips I would not be able to calculate a proof demonstrating that the earth is round.
Falk’s absolute enthusiasm for the detective work of medieval history comes through from the first page. He discusses how exciting it is to handle documents and machinery from this period. There’s even a working virtual model of Westwyk’s equatorium (an astronomical calculator), hosted online, for the reader to refer to if they want a more in-depth understanding. You can tell that Falk is a teacher. He’s clearly invested in helping his readers to understand how the equipment was used, not just why it came about or what the political ramifications were. For example, he makes a valiant (though in my case unsuccessful) attempt to teach the reader how to use hand signs to do complex arithmetic. It’s remarkably interactive for a non-fiction history book – on which, more later. I love reading (or listening to) books, especially non-fiction, written by people who are clearly having a whale of a time with their subject, and this is perhaps the best example I’ve encountered of that in years. He quotes extensively from primary sources, but also discusses the historiography around them in a clear and accessible way – why did people once believe this source mean this and now take it to mean that; how do we interpret this marginalia on that manuscript, and so on. I find that type of thing really fascinating, so I’m glad he included it, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story itself.
As far as I know Falk is not a Christian (and irrespective of his personal faith or lack thereof, he’s writing for a secular audience interested in history, not theology). Even so, I found this to be a better exploration of the relationship between faith and science than God and Galileo, a book written by Christian astrophysicists that has that as its express goal! He explores some of the tensions that did arise between individual scholars and the church – especially about whether or not the earth had existed from eternity – and identifies that (as with Galileo much later), the tension was not so much between the Bible and scientific evidence, but rather between the data and Aristotle, whose writings had been so thoroughly incorporated into people’s worldviews by that point that it was difficult to disentangle them from actual church doctrine. (Scripture, incidentally, was right on this front and Aristotle wrong: the earth had a beginning and will have an end). I knew a little about this going in, but it was very interesting to learn more.
Falk makes a point of mentioning how much scientific study and astronomy was funded by the church, who viewed it as a means of better understanding and imaging God and His creation. He even has a fantastic epilogue where he talks about the fact that faith and reason were not seen as being opposites until the Enlightenment. There were certainly differences about how to interpret different passages of Scripture and/or scientific theories in light of one another, but that’s very different from them being fundamentally in conflict*. He also talks about Christian scholars learning from and honouring Jewish and Muslim scholars. Despite this, the very first review I saw of this posited that the monks and clergy were “fighting back” against the dogma and narrow-mindedness of “the church” (I would love to know what this reviewer thinks the “church establishment” of the time was if not monks and clergy). Somehow people have still reviewed this book as if it’s proof the church have always tried to position themselves in opposition to scientific progress. I suppose this all goes to show that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it less smug. Anyway, it’s not the main point of the book by any means, but I really appreciated the way Falk handled the subject of faith and reason.
I listened to the audiobook, which was excellently narrated by the author. Still, I’m not sure if this was the best format to choose or not. There are a lot of diagrams and figures, and because the book is so interactive, Falk assumes that the reader will e.g. locate a particular part of an illustration and use it to help with a calculation. The audiobook does come with a PDF of all the supporting material, but since I mostly listen to audiobooks while walking/cooking/cleaning, I generally couldn’t look at a picture as it was being described, and I don’t have a very visual imagination so I couldn’t just call them up in my mind’s eye. Some of the calculations and tables passed completely over my head as a result. I think if I’d been reading printed words and looking at diagrams, I would have been able to follow them much better. That said, there is also a lot of Middle English in this, and I enjoyed hearing Falk read it out. There are also translations every time, but I think hearing it aloud adds to the storytelling element of the book. If Falk writes another book, I will certainly read it, but I don’t know whether I will go for the printed or audio version – it seems to me that they both have a lot of merit. My only other tiny quibble is that I wish this had more of the biological sciences – botany and medicine were not exactly coming along in leaps and bounds in this period, but they were being studied. This is pretty laser focussed on maths and astronomy.
I really can’t recommend this highly enough if you’re interested the history of science, the history of the church, or the history of scholarship in western Europe. Falk writes with such respect of his subjects – not just Westwyk, but all the figures that crop up in the book. You do have to have a relatively open mind about what constitutes “science”. Some of the dismissive reviews I have seen complain about the way that astronomy and astrology were treated with equal seriousness in the 13th and 14th century – but if you take science as a means of theorising and learning about the natural world via debate and investigation, it makes perfect sense to call astrological studies 700 years ago “science”. Astrology is an exploded theory now, but it wasn’t then, and part of the reason it’s exploded now is because of the scholarship carried out back then! Unlike some of his reviewers, Falk is not really interested in the current fashionable past-time of comparing medieval people with 21st century people and finding one group or the other wanting. Instead, his goal is to place medieval scholars back into the story of science, from which they have been vanished over the past couple of centuries. He does a fantastic job of it – I can’t wait to see what he writes next!
*Also, if you think that eliminating religious faith from any given debate prevents internecine squabbles over doctrine, allow me to suggest you look into something known as “communism”.
louloureads 
I’m definitely not interested in the history of the church, but I did study history of science at uni, particularly the history of astronomy, and have remained interested – though that shelf with On the Shoulders of Giants and so has remained untouched for a fair while.
Faith and science (and literature) were so intertwined up until the C19th that, despite Galileo, I had not thought of them in opposition, but just skip over the churchy bits.
Yes, faith and science and literature were all very intertwined for a long time – one of the things I really loved about Possession, when I read it earlier this year, is that people did not really see theological and scientific debates as separate things, which is more true to material I’ve read from the time.
This sounds great, and has definite points of comparison to the James Hannam book I read recently, The Globe, although it stuck to one particular area of scientific discovery rather than ranging widely as it sounds as if this one does. I wonder if we’re seeing a little turnaround – if science writers are beginning to see that setting science up in competition with religion isn’t particularly sensible, not to mention accurate. I always prefer to read non-fiction than listen to it – I need to be able to pause, re-read a bit I didn’t get first time, consult notes, look at illustrations, etc. I find I zone out if I try to listen to it.
I go back and forth on listening to non-fiction – it’s often narrated by authors, who are frequently professional lecturers and therefore engaging and enthusiastic speakers. But I do often get to the end and think “I wish I’d been able to follow that footnote up/see that diagram” etc. Yes, I hope that science writers are beginning to have a bit of a change of attitude towards the relationship between faith and science – there’s no inherent need for them to exist in conflict.
This sounds terrific and I think a lot of the same things would appeal to me as did to you. I took a terrific Medieval History course in university and my prof did an excellent job of highlighting the church’s role in scientific study at the time. And we were absolutely not allowed to call it the Dark Ages!
It’s great that you had a professor who talked about that! And I am a wee bit jealous that you got to study a Medieval History module at university – that sounds like a lot of fun. The stuff about the medieval church in this is so interesting.
It was such a good class that I considered pursuing a history degree! A really excellent professor makes such a difference.
For interpreting we are required to learn new words in English, and I just added “internecine” to my list. 😵💫
One thing I find interesting about my current bible college is that they weave Christianity into the assignments and the way that the students think, but they don’t doubt that other things happen. Well, I mean, one professor did say the start of all language was the Tower of Babel, and I feel like we could do better than that, but in general, professors are asking that you think through a Christian perspective about the world, not how the world would be.
Internecine is one of my favourite words for describing conflict! It’s so precise. (Obviously because of what I teach, I have a quite absurd number of words for conflict).
I had to go through a process of finding other words that match internecine and put them into four registers: intimate, casual, consultative, and formal. It was really hard! LOL.