BOOK REVIEWS Grant, Edward, the Foundations of Modern

BOOK REVIEWS Grant, Edward, The Foundations of Modern Sciencein the Middle Ages: Their Reli- gious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). xiv, 263 pp. £35.00 ISBN 0 521 56137 X Edward Grant has a deep understanding of both modern science and medieval culture. Historians of science should read this book-if no other-to understand the Middle Ages, and medievalists should read it-if no other-to understand the history of science. Most of the book is accessible to general readers as well. This is a new book rather than a revision of Grant's Physical .Sciencein the Middle Ages (1971), although of course some of the material is derived from the earlier volume. The present book is "a new interpretation that attributes a major role to the Middle Ages in the generation of early modern science" (xiii), and it radically alters his previous position about medieval natural philosophy. "The whole of movable being" was "the proper subject of natural philosophy" (136) in the Middle Ages, excluding absolutely nothing in the physical world. Grant now argues that modern science could not exist except on seventeenth-century foundations, and seventeenth-century science could not exist except on twelfth- century foundations. His statement that "something happened between approx- imately 1200 and 1600 that proved conducive" to science should be almost self- evident ; otherwise, early modern science would have sprung, literally as a mira- cle, from nowhere. Grant also courageously states the currently unfashionable fact that despite their possession and use of Greek natural philosophy, including Aristotle's, nei- ther the Byzantine east nor the Muslim world created the precedents of the early modern scientific revolution (which Grant continues correctly to regard as a revolution). The mother of modern science was Western Europe. Medievalists have long been familiar with a twelfth-century renaissance in Western Europe, but Grant specifically addresses the effects of this renaissance on science. He argues a continuity from the twelfth through the seventeenth century, a continuity consisting partly of specifics but much more in general attitude. Arguments have been made for pushing the borders of the renaissance earlier than the twelfth century, but scientific stars such as Bede in the eighth century were extraordinarily rare in the firmament. Indeed, Grant reminds us that the Roman Empire, both in its earlier pagan form and in its later Christ- ian form, was not much interested in intellectual discovery. The early Christian fathers were less hostile toward than uninterested in natural philosophy; they generally dismissed it as yielding only probable knowledge as opposed to the certain knowledge of revelation. But the twelfth century, Grant shows, produced not simply the resumption of Greek knowledge that had been lost (though that was important) but also a new 76 attitude toward authority that in turn generated original and revolutionary new ideas. No century can easily be characterized, and the papacy of the twelfth century moved to consolidate ecclesiastical authority and orthodoxy, but it can be argued that it did so precisely because of the challenges from new ideas that threatened it. Furthermore, the church advanced the cause of natural philosophy throughout the Middle Ages with only occasional efforts (as in 1277) to restrain it. Galileo regarded the Aristotelians and scholastics of his day as fusty fools, but five centuries earlier it was the Aristotelians and scholastics whose new ideas made Galileo's own new ideas possible later. Most important was the challenge to authority posed by the earliest scholastics. Rather than simply citing the Bible or ecclesiastical traditions to make a point, as most earlier medieval thinkers had done, the scholastics pointed out inconsistencies in tradition and argued that natural reason should be used in theology, law, and philosophy (including natural philosophy) to debate and (they hoped) resolve such difficulties. Evolving the dialectic method, the scholastics made original thought a highly prized social trait for the first time since antiquity. Second in importance was the revival (through translations into Latin directly from Greek or through Syriac and Arabic) of most of the Greek natural philosophy that had hitherto been ignored in the West. Though some opposi- tion arose to Christian theology that derived from Muslim commentaries on Aris- totle, "the translated works of Aristotle were enthusiastically welcomed and highly regarded by both arts masters and theologians" of the Middle Ages (70). The philosophers built on this restored knowledge with vast numbers of critical commentaries produced with striking new freedom and originality: medieval natural philosophy shaped the scientific revolution to come. Next in importance was the creation of universities, a unique invention of the Western Middle Ages quite distinct from both ancient Greek and medieval Muslim schools. Western universities created "a remarkable legacy of relatively free rational inquiry" (199) unknown in all but an extraordinarily few times and cultures. Another attitude reshaping thought was the belief in an ordered cosmos that God creates discoverable and understandable by human reason, rather than one in which God acts directly and irregularly. Yet another was a curious negative condition whose importance Grant sees: precisely becausethe church fathers were uninterested in natural science, there was "no effort to... produce a 'Christian science'" (175); the Bible and tradition were almost never invoked to resolve a scientific controversy. This meant that medieval scholars, including theologians, could explore questions of natural philosophy with much support and little hin- drance from the church. Grant analyzes three medieval debates as particularly relevant to modern science : the eternity of the world, the double-truth theory, and the question of God's absolute power (a complex but essential issue). Grant might have made more of the implications of the two-truth theory for the modern world. Briefly, the theory held that though theology was more important than natural philosophy, one sort of truth could be held in theology and another in natural science. This important theory allowed medieval scientists to pursue their own interests with enormous freedom. The essential reason for the later condemna- tion of Galileo was his undermining of the two truths by claiming that natural science could discover absolute truth (and by implication overrule theology), .

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