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Darrera modificació: 2011-08-03
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Hannam, James, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, Londres, Icon Books, 2009, ix + 435 pp., il.
- Resum
- 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. -- James Hannam is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge where he studied physics and then gained a Ph.D. in the history of science.
Contents:
* Introduction: The truth about science in the Middle Ages
* After the Fall of Rome ; progress inthe early Middle Ages
* The mathematical pope
* The rise of reason
* The twelfth-century Renaissance
* Heresy and reason
* How pagan science was Christianized
* Bloody failure: magic and medicine in the Middle Ages
* The secret arts of alchemy and astrology
* Roger Bacon and the science of light
* The clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford
* The Merton calculators
* The apogee of Medieval science
* New horizons
* Humanism and the Reformation
* The polymaths of the sixteenth century
* The workings of man: medicine and anatomy
* Humanist astronomy and Nicolaus Copernicus
* Reforming the heavens
* Galileo and Giordano Bruno
* Galileo and the new astronomy
* The trial and triumph of Galileo
* Conclusion: A scientific revolution?
- Matèries
- Història de la ciència
Divulgació
Església - Inquisició
- Notes
- Fitxa de l'editor: http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/?s=Hannam
Reimpr. en rústica: 2010. Ed. nord-americana: The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, Washington, Regnery, 2011, xxiii + 454 pp.
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