The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science

Truly, there are many things which our minds have mastered, but which our hands cannot accomplish.

Far from the stereotype of a stagnant scientific environment which did no more than preserve the ideas of the ancients, computists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries continued to refine their astronomical models, with ever more accurate estimates of the solar and lunar cycles.

The doctrine of ‘scientism’, the belief that an infallible scientific method is the only route to reliable knowledge, is, in its own way, as dangerous as blind religious faith.

Chris Wickham, Medieval Europe

James Hannam, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Either way, study of the natural world was a fundamental part of medieval life. (It is a fact we can easily fail to notice, if the only histories we read are of kings and battles.)

Many translations of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy are available online (or in print); it is not only a window into the medieval mind but remains powerful and insightful today.