A spellbinding journey through the life of an English monk, an age of discovery and the mysteries of the medieval mind
Seb Falk is a historian and lecturer at Cambridge University. In 2016 he was named as a BBC New Generation Thinker. This is his first book.
Stunning: both exquisitely written and so very clever. By following
the life of one little-known monk, John of Westwyk, Falk opens up
for us the sophisticated and utterly different ways in which people
in the Middle Ages thought and makes us question our assumptions
about the medieval past.
*BBC History Magazine Books of the Year*
Turns our understanding of medieval science on its head ... Falk
shows how scientific inquiries central to the Renaissance actually
began generations earlier than we thought, and despite our
perception of the church as the enemy of science, those
intellectual pioneers were often monks
*The Telegraph Books of the Year*
As fascinating as it is exquisitely written . . . the range of
mathematics, astronomy, and engineering is impressive. More
impressive still is the elegance with which Falk tells the tale
*Times Books of the Year*
Remarkable ... a book that illuminates not just the visionaries of
the past but also the troubled state of anti-intellectualism in the
modern world
*Financial Times*
"Might it change minds?" is my criterion. The Light Ages might. Seb
Falk's dazzling study of a late-medieval scientist is an
uncontainably tentacular monograph, reaching from a windswept cell
at Tynemouth, where John of Westwyck built an astrolabe, to
penetrate unexplored recesses of the history and philosophy of
science, and extending across Christendom into the cultures that
surrounded and informed it. Falk excises errors about the Middle
Ages without filleting their enchantment
*TLS Books of the Year*
Unambiguously and successfully an antidote to the cliché of the
'Dark Ages' as a millennium of stagnation and regression . . .
Falk's approach is to explain the things we share with our medieval
forebears and the things we differ on: to reveal how they saw the
universe
*Literary Review*
Riveting. . . a brilliant study of medieval astronomy and learning
. . . I agree with Falk. We need to give more respect to the giants
of the Middle Ages on whose shoulders we stand
*Spectator*
Fascinating . . . the Dark Ages were anything but dark; Falk's book
is a lucid and eloquent reproof to anyone who says otherwise
*Prospect*
Seb Falk lays out the wonders of medieval science. . . The
mechanical clock, spectacles, advances in navigation, a grasp of
tides and currents - these were among the achievements of the
Middle Ages
*The Economist*
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
*Tom Holland, author of Dominion*
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