HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

This course is an introduction to the history of science in the Middle Ages and focuses on the ways that scholars understood and interpreted the natural world from the late Roman period to the high Middle Ages. It examines the kinds of questions that medieval scholars asked and the problems that interested them, the evidence that they used to develop their ideas, and the contexts in which they wrote and studied. The geographical focus of the course is primarily western Europe, although we will also examine issues such as the introduction of Arabic science into the west and, for some topics, consider how different strands of thought (e.g. based in Greek and Latin traditions) affected the discussion of scientific ideas.

By the end of the course students will have:
- gained a broad knowledge of the history of science in the Middle Ages, and how approaches to studying the history of science in the Middle Ages have changed over time;
- learned how to examine and analyse complex and fragmentary sources;
- developed their analytical and critical skills in using evidence and scholarship;
- advanced their skills in analysing historical changes over a long period of time.

The only prerequisite for this course is to be able to speak and read English, although ideally students would also have studied some medieval history before taking this course. Some knowledge of Latin may be useful but is not essential.

This course is an introduction to the history of science in the Middle Ages and focuses on the ways that scholars understood and interpreted the natural world from the late Roman period to the high Middle Ages. It examines the kinds of questions that medieval scholars asked and the problems that interested them, the evidence that they used to develop their ideas, and the contexts in which they wrote and studied. The geographical focus of the course is primarily western Europe, although we will also examine issues such as the introduction of Arabic science into the west and, for some topics, consider how different strands of thought (e.g. based in Greek and Latin traditions) affected the discussion of scientific ideas. Topics may include, for example: the nature of science in the Middle Ages and what it meant to be a scientist; the relationship between science and theology; the study of science in monastic houses; natural phenomena such as comets, eclipses and rainbows; the development of the genre of scientific writing; observation and experiment; changes in approaches to the study of science during the Middle Ages.

Bruce Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2007)
Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)
David C. Lindberg, Michael H. Shank (eds), The Cambridge History of Science. 2: Medieval Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Barbara Obrist, Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology, Speculum 72:1 (1997), 33-84
Emilie Savage-Smith and Yossef Rapoport, An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, edited with an annotated translation (Leiden: Brill, 2014)
Faith Wallis, What a medieval diagram shows: a case study of "computus", Studies in Iconography 36 (2015), 1-40

Students will write an essay of maximum 3,500 words which will form a starting point for discussion in the oral exam. During the oral exam the students will also be asked about other topics discussed in class.

Seminars focusing on discussion of medieval evidence and modern scholarship.

English

oral