The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450

Citation

Lindberg, D. C. (2008). The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Chapter Summary

The second edition has fourteen chapters, a preface, notes, a bibliography and an index, and runs to 480 pages with 76 halftones, 36 line drawings and six maps. The publisher presents it as an account of scientific ideas, practices and institutions from pre-Socratic Greek philosophy to late-medieval scholasticism, covering cosmology, astronomy, mechanics, optics, alchemy, natural history and medicine, and the transmission of Greek science to medieval Islam and then to medieval Europe. The second edition has revisions on nearly every page and some completely rewritten sections, notably on Islamic science and on the importance of Mesopotamian science for Greek astronomy.

Chapter 1: Science before the Greeks

The chapter asks "What Is Science?", then considers prehistoric attitudes toward nature and the beginnings of science in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Chapters 2–3: The Greeks and the Cosmos; Aristotle's Philosophy of Nature

Chapter 2 runs from the world of Homer and Hesiod through the first Greek philosophers, the Milesians, the questions of change and of knowledge, and Plato's world of Forms and cosmology. Chapter 3 is devoted to Aristotle: his life and works, metaphysics and epistemology, nature and change, cosmology, motion terrestrial and celestial, and his work as a biologist.

Chapters 4–6: Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity

Chapter 4, "Hellenistic Natural Philosophy", covers schools and education, the Lyceum after Aristotle, and the Epicureans and Stoics. Chapter 5, "The Mathematical Sciences in Antiquity", treats Greek mathematics, early Greek and Hellenistic planetary astronomy, optics and the science of weights. Chapter 6, "Greek and Roman Medicine", follows medicine from early Greek and Hippocratic medicine through Hellenistic anatomy and physiology to Galen.

Chapters 7–8: Roman and Early Medieval Science; Islamic Science

Chapter 7 covers popularisers and encyclopedists, translations, the role of Christianity, early medieval education and learning in the Greek East. Chapter 8 follows Greek science eastward into Islam, its translation into Arabic, Islamic reception of it, the Islamic scientific achievement and its fate.

Chapters 9–10: The Revival of Learning in the West; Recovery of Greek and Islamic Science

Chapter 9 moves from the Carolingian reforms through the schools of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the translation movement to the rise of universities. Chapter 10 deals with the assimilation of the new learning, Aristotle in the university curriculum, points of conflict between natural philosophy and theology, and the condemnations of 1270 and 1277.

Chapters 11–13: Medieval Natural Philosophy

Chapter 11, "The Medieval Cosmos", covers the structure of the cosmos, mathematical astronomy, astrology and the surface of the Earth. Chapter 12, "The Physics of the Sublunar Region", deals with matter, form and substance, combination and mixture, alchemy, change and motion (including the mathematical description and dynamics of motion and its quantification) and optics. Chapter 13, "Medieval Medicine and Natural History", covers medical practitioners, medicine in the universities, disease and therapy, anatomy and surgery, the hospital and natural history.

Chapter 14: The Legacy of Ancient and Medieval Science

The final chapter takes up the continuity question, candidates for revolutionary status and the Scientific Revolution.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–6: Antiquity

• Natural philosophy: inquiry into nature pursued within philosophical, religious and institutional settings, the book's subtitle.
• Aristotelian physics and cosmology: nature and change, terrestrial and celestial motion.
• Mathematical sciences: astronomy, optics and the science of weights.

Chapters 7–10: Transmission

• Translation movements: from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic and Greek into Latin.
• Universities and the 1270 and 1277 condemnations: how the new learning was assimilated and where it conflicted with theology.

Chapters 11–14: Medieval Science and Its Legacy

• Medieval physics of motion: the nature, mathematical description and quantification of motion.
• The continuity question: whether the Scientific Revolution grew out of medieval science.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A single account of ancient and medieval science. The publisher says the first edition was the first successful attempt to present both in one volume, and the contents run in sequence from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Scientific Revolution.
• Context. The subtitle and the contents place science within philosophy, religion and institutions, with chapters on schools, universities, Christianity and translation, and not only on theories.
• Updated scholarship. The second edition rewrites the sections on Islamic science and gives more weight to Mesopotamia.
• Reviews. Angela Smith in H-Net calls it a concise, highly accessible introduction that will remain a fundamental resource. F. Jamil Ragep in Isis calls it a fine book, the culmination of a century of distinguished research, to be read by undergraduates and professional historians.

Limitations

• Western focus. It is a history of the European scientific tradition. Islamic science enters as part of the transmission to Europe, and Chinese, Indian and other traditions are outside its scope.
• Ends in 1450. Later developments are touched on only in the closing chapter on legacy.
• Survey scale. Fourteen chapters and many sections cover more than two millennia in 480 pages, so individual topics, from Plato's cosmology to medieval dynamics, are treated briefly.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the history of science and technology list, Lindberg covers the earliest period. Peter Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus's Making Modern Science begins with the Scientific Revolution and follows science to the twentieth century, so it continues where Lindberg stops. Steven Shapin's The Scientific Revolution questions whether a single revolution took place, and so takes up Lindberg's closing "continuity question". Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump is a detailed study of one seventeenth-century controversy.

For a broader first look, James McClellan and Harold Dorn's Science and Technology in World History and Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History cover many civilisations. Lindberg is the more focused treatment of the European tradition from the Greeks to 1450.

How to Use This Book

The book is for undergraduates in history, philosophy or the sciences who want a full account of science before the Scientific Revolution.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 8–10, which tell the main story of Greek natural philosophy, mathematical sciences, Islamic science and the medieval university.
• By interest: Chapter 6 and 13 for medicine, Chapters 11 and 12 for cosmos and physics, Chapter 7 for the early Middle Ages.
• Framing: Chapter 1 at the start and Chapter 14 at the end.

Use the section headings of each chapter as a study outline, and pair the later chapters with a primary-source reader if one is available.