God's Philosophers

God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science is a book by James Hannam which rebuts "the idea ‘that there was no science worth mentioning in the Middle Ages … [and] that the Church held back what meagre advances were made’."^[1] Hannam argues that "medieval scholars overturned the false wisdom of ancient Greece to lay the foundations of modern science."^[2] The book rebuts a number of modern canards about Medieval Christianity, such as:

• the idea that the pope tried to suppress the number zero or stop doctors from learning about anatomy through dissection of human corpses
• the idea that people in Medieval Europe thought the earth was flat (see Myth of the flat Earth)

He lists 13th century inventions such as spectacles, the mechanical clock, and the windmill.

The book was published in the UK in 2009 by Icon Books Ltd. (ISBN 978-1848310704) and is included in the short list for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books in 2010. The US edition was published in 2011 by Regnery Press under the title The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. In 2011 the book was shortlisted for the Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science.^[3]

See also[]

• History of science
• Joseph Needham, an historian who wondered 'why modern science arose only in the West and not in China'
• Toby Huff

References[]

External links[]

• Review in New Humanist
• Review in
• Review^{[permanent dead link]} in Spectator Magazine
• Review in The Medieval Review
• Royal Society 2010 Prize for Science Books Shortlist
• Review in Metascience Volume 20,1,2011 by Edward Grant
• Review in Science & Education 21,3,2012 by Prof. Igal Galili

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