The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science [Paperback]

Named a Best Book of 2020 by Magnificent...[Falk lets] us inhabit, for a spell of seven finely crafted chapters, the vibrant mind of a 14th-century Benedictine monk, John?Westwyk... [Written] as if John?Westwyk?and?Seb?Falk, separated in time but not in spirit, were joining hands while guiding us along; or as if Falks bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end,? Falk offers a sense of the international nature of medieval scholarship, debunking the image of isolated, repressive monastic communities and highlighting the influence of both Muslim and Jewish innovators. A wonderful book, as at home bringing to life the obscure details of a Hertfordshire monk as it is explicating the infinite reaches of space and time. Required reading for anyone who thinks that the Middle Ages were a dark age. Compulsive, brilliantly clear, and superbly well-written, Like a fictional scientist cloning dinosaurs from wisps of DNA, Seb Falk takes barely surviving fragments of evidence about an almost forgotten astronomer in a storm-chilled, clifftop cell to conjure the vast, teeming world of scientific research, practice, and invention in the Late Middle Ages&Profoundly scholarly, wonderfully lucid, and grippingly vivid, If you think the term medieval science is a contradiction then you should read this hugely enlightening and important book. Seb Falk has framed a fascinating book around his personal quest to understand how scientific thinking flourished. Long before the word scientist was coined, John of Westwyk devised a precision instrument to explore the universe and our place in it. Falk recreates the schooling of this ordinary (if gadget-obsessed) medieval monk in loving detail. Theres a world of science on every page. US