Are you familiar with Stanley Jaki’s writing about the development of science in the Middle Ages? Based on work by Pierre Duhem. If not I’m sure you’d find it very worthwhile.
I am not familiar. I’ll go look for it.
My basic position is that a great many very interesting things were going on in the Middle Ages. I think the era gets a bad reputation for being somehow “stuck” after the Classical Age ended. I think Europe came up with a lot of creative thought after Rome fell and before the Renaissance kicked in and got everyone focused back on the Ancients. I mean, I like the Ancients quite a lot. But Europe came up with additional ideas pretty much on its own.
“Are you familiar with Stanley Jaki’s writing about the development of science in the Middle Ages? Based on work by Pierre Duhem. If not I’m sure you’d find it very worthwhile.”
I have read books from both. It blows me away to think that Duhem’s works on the history of science in the Middle Ages are still essential reading 100 years after he died - especially his classic Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds.