What a fascinating work, such immersive research, and pretty gripping story-telling and presentation of a period which is presented to the world as "Dark ages", stigmatized by the very brutal and influential powers of religion, yet great scientific discoveries, bases for modern science, both natural, life, formal were created.
So many wonderful minds had to act in shadows, yet the human mind, curiosity, and desire for explanation and understanding of the world, made its way in occult ways, but it did!
We do such an injustice towards all thinkers of the time, just considering the era to be dark and ignoring all the huge input individuals made in hidden ways. Arab and European thinkers made this period a cornerstone of modern science and I sincerely appreciate the author for giving us an insight into the time!

I wanted to cover this in my books column and just didn't get a chance to--it's really good, imaginative, gives a lot of detail about medieval intellectual life in an elegant way. A really admirable book.

Thanks to NetGalley for granting me this arc in exchange for fair and honest review.

Released in November 2020, The Light Ages is a fairly new release. When I saw this on NetGalley I was extremely intrigued. The first thing I thought of were the different machines we see used in Game of Thrones like that big spear they used against the dragons. Obviously, I know that's part is fiction, but I was curious to see how advanced was that period.

The book ended ip not really being about that. It focused more on more esoteric areas of science, if science is even the right way to describe it. The story is structured around this religious text by a medevil monk. Falk tries to focus in on this particular period as a way of talking about the science, but as others have noted, this focuses on a tiny sliver over the "dark ages". Unfortunately, I just don't think that's effective.

It feels like it's trying to be more of a medieval history book than a science history book. Perhaps that is to be expected since Falk is an expert on medieval history. Nevertheless, I was expecting it to be more grounded in the science. Instead it felt like we were being forced to listen to extremely obscure figures in history and seeing some the esoteric forms of science fit into the conversation. I found it extremely difficult to follow.

The writing wasn't particularly bad, and since I read this after publication, I was able to listen to the audiobook on scribd. The author narrates his own book doing an excellent job. It suggests he has the ability to communicate, so it's probably more that this book just wasn't the book I wanted it to be.

It was intriguing at times, but for the most part I just wanted to get it over with. I did not feel like I got much out of this book. I couldn't we give you a general overview of it. I can tell you a few scientific accomplishments--vecause that's what I was really looking for. Overall though, the book just wasn't focused enough for me, or perhaps a fairer way of putting it is, it wasn't focused on what I cared about.

3/5

The Dark Ages. The Middle Ages. Medieval times. Those are the descriptors historians use for the time from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in roughly A.D. 476 (the Eastern Roman Empire stuck around for almost 1000 years more) to the Renaissance in the 1300s and 1400s. All of those terms have taken on a derogatory meaning, as the time period has been seen as devoid of the science, art, culture, and “civilization” (whatever that truly means) that characterized the Greeks and especially the Roman Empire.
This characterization is heavily countered in Seb Falk’s new book, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science. As the subtitle implies, Falk lasers in on science in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and skillfully shows that medieval science was much more advanced than is often credited. To achieve this, he takes the perspective of one man who lived a fairly normal life in medieval Europe and, despite not being famous in his time or ours, is connected to many of the advancements of the time period: John of Westwyk. By using John’s perspective, Falk anchors his analysis in a specific place and figure but still retains the flexibility to branch out into a discussion of medieval science at large. It’s a highly effective decision that adds to the book in numerous ways.
The most surprising of the innovations is the most low-tech of all, while at the same time “digital”: a counting system that Europeans used for science, math, and commerce that goes to 9,999 and can be shown on ten fingers! Falk explains succinctly:
How did monks like Bede do decimal arithmetic on their hands? Hold your hands up with your palms facing away from you and your thumbs together. Start on the left, with the three outside fingers of your left hand. Those three fingers, bent fully, partially or not at all, combine to represent the units from one to nine. That is why the technical term for integers was digiti, the Latin for fingers — and hence our numerical ‘digits’ and digital technology. Next, multiples of ten were shown using different shapes made by bending the left thumb and forefinger over one another (the Latin for tens was articuli, which also meant knuckles). The hundreds column is the right thumb and forefinger, and thousands are on the last three fingers of your right hand. Numbers from 0 to 9,999 can be thus shown using two hands.
Fascinating! But why do you start on the left with the smallest numbers? That’s the opposite of how we write numbers. And what uses does this organized counting method possibly serve?
There were two reasons to use your left hand for the smallest numbers. First, it meant that the number could be read correctly by someone facing you, from their left to right. These hand gestures were about communication as much as counting. They could be used in the marketplace, where noise or language could prevent conversation, or in the monastery, where silence was often required. Bede even suggested that the numbers could be used as an alphanumeric code to pass messages in dangerous situations. The second reason for starting with the left hand was so, if the calculation involved only numbers below one hundred, your right hand was free to take notes, point or demonstrate. Bede’s perfectly practical system came directly from the classroom, where monks also learned to use their hands to help them memorise musical theory and locate days and dates in the cycles of the Sun and Moon.

This is a pretty good start to show the advanced nature of Western European science during the Middle Ages. But wasn’t the rest of the world much more advanced? Falk doesn’t approach this directly (the biggest missed opportunity of the book, in my opinion), but he does outline several examples of innovations in China, India, and/or the Dar al-Islam that were adopted in medieval Western Europe. An impressive chapter is devoted to the astrolabe, a Muslim invention. Ample space is given to the work of polymath Mohammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, from whose name we get the word “algorithm”. India is given rightful credit for our inaccurately-named “Arabic” numeral system. But Falk is clear that some Western Europeans, especially monks, knew how to use these innovations and sometimes created them anew with “Eastern” knowledge as a starting point. Case in point, the mechanical clock:
What defines the mechanical clock — and excludes most of the water-based devices which had been used worldwide and developed over millennia — is its reliable, self-regulating driving mechanism. (I say ‘most’ because water-based clockwork mechanisms had been used to power astronomical devices in China for over three hundred years. These were not fully mechanical, relying in part on a constant flow of water, and do not seem to have spread beyond a few outstanding examples. Nevertheless, they remind us how often an invention that at first appears revolutionary turns out on closer inspection to be hard to distinguish from a long history of incremental improvements; in this case, the ever more creative Chinese uses of water to power astronomical clockwork.)
That is what sets Falk’s work apart from others on the topic. He goes into detail on the scientific accomplishments of Western Europe (of which there are many) but also shows the undercurrent of Asian and North African scientists that were inevitably more advanced. For more on this specific topic, check out the classic Crash Course World History episode that explores the “Dark Ages” in a more global context. I was expecting a book more along the lines of that, focused on the Islamic and Chinese innovations happening at the same time, but I was more surprised by Falk’s unearthing of a proto-scientific society that currently remains underappreciated because of its lack of a strong historical empire. The Light Ages is one step along the path to correcting that assumption.
I received a review copy of The Light Ages courtesy of W.W. Norton and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

The author makes clear that the Middle Ages or Dark Ages were not nearly as devoid of scientific thinking as common knowledge would have us think. Each chapter tackles two or three threads of science. This is done by exploring the life of a typical (though highly educated) monk living at St. Albans Abby, north of London.

The only problem is that some chapters cover too much material. For example, the first chapter explores the making of the modern calendar and astronomy’s influence on agriculture of the era. The second chapter approaches the development of timekeeping and its influence on agriculture. I found the discussion of the understanding of 24 equal hours of the day from the earlier practice of dividing the time between sunrise and sunset into twelve hours, and the time between sunset and sunrise into twelve hours. The early practice meant twelve shorter daylight hours during the winter season and twelve longer daylight hours during the summer season. Because the church played such a major role in the life of the Middle Ages, it was important to understand the church’s role in promoting new scientific knowledge and in hindering its growth at times.

I found the book interesting, but it sometimes felt as if the author was blending too many topics in each chapter. As this reader progressed through the book, it became obvious that seven chapters of the book could naturally be presented in smaller units. This might make the book more accessible to the casual reader. This reader would give the book four out of five stars.
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This review is based on a free electronic copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are my own.

The Medieval period is often looked down upon by historians and laypeople alike as backward and lacking, especially when compared to the Classical era and Renaissance. Even its names are dismissive -- The Middle Ages, The Dark Ages, The Medieval Period.... all of those imply that the era is lesser than. Only a bridge between one "great" era and the next. That thought couldn't be more wrong.

The light ages takes a long hard look at the era (particularly the High Middle Ages) through the lens of a regular old monk in rural England. The technological advancements that were present in the age. The scientific theory. The innovation. The inventions. Things that we see as ubiquitous now but were groundbreaking in their day.

The book is a pleasant mix of easy to read with some real depth to this. For an average reader, it may be difficult but the author clearly tries to make the subject matter interesting. For a history buff, it's right on point. And for a scholar, there's enough meat here to lead some great jumping off points.

Some interesting parts early on include just how reliant the medieval peasant was on astronomy. That time as we know it wasn't codified until this era. That there was exchanges of knowledge from all over the world. That Monks in England knew of advances in places like the Middle East and China. That the populace was more literate than we think. That mathematics was more advanced. Frankly I was intrigued.

The author clearly knows their stuff and has done a ton of research and it shows. This is the kind of book I would have loved in my High Middle Ages course in College or in my Medieval England Course. I also feel that this would be a good book for people who are writing in the Medieval period to read since it disabuses many of the incorrect notions about how "backward" the period was. It also covers a lot of what daily life was sometimes like.

Five Stars for an absolutely wonderfully well-researched book that doesn't just focus on the luminaries of the time but the real people.

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, for the opportunity to read this book.

The common view of the medieval era in Europe is that it was a period of darkness. That it was an age when science was forgotten and books languished in the dusty back rooms while wild-eyed monks burned the relics of the past and the Pope banned every new idea that came along.

Many of our modern views of history come straight from Victorian England, whose historians either praised or denigrated various eras of history depending on how well it fit into their own mythology about the Birth of England. The medieval era, with its strange culture, writings, and devotion to the Pope in Rome suffered the most, becoming known thereafter as the Dark Ages.

But, as medieval historian and Cambridge lecturer Seb Falk argues in his new history of the later medieval era, The Light Ages, these centuries were far from dark. Using the fourteenth century monk, John of Westwyk, as an anchor for his narrative, Falk shows how the medieval era was, in fact, an era of advancement that gave us soaring Gothic cathedrals, mechanical clocks, eyeglasses, scientific works being translated from Greek, Arabic, and Latin, and a robust university culture that spread knowledge across Europe. Ideas came from as far afield as China, and were debated extensively before being absorbed by scholars and built upon. And while the various Popes of the era might have banned books, it was as effective then as it is now, which is to say, not very effective at all. The banned books were still passed around and read by enthusiastic scholars.

Though Falk’s narrative is enthusiastic and sprinkled with humor (take note of the astrolabe that does not come equipped with an ascension app), it does grow a bit dense at times, particularly when Falk explains how to use an astrolabe or the twists and turns of figuring the proper dates for planting and harvesting using the sun and the Julian calendar. But the density at these points serves a purpose, as Falk notes toward the end: if the equations are difficult for a modern person to figure out, they were doubly so for medieval scholars who did not have access to electronic calculators. But figure them they did, and usually to the high degree of precision necessary for figuring out how to make a new calendar, invent the mechanical clock, or develop plans for the grand cathedrals that still stand centuries later.

Though it might take two or three readings to fully absorb the details in The Light Ages, it is a successful in its arguments that the medieval era was filled with intellectual life and scientific advancement. It is a social imaginary of the Western world that the greatest scientific achievements were made by lone geniuses laboring in obscurity until they made breakthroughs that changed the course of history. This is, of course, not the case. Like social history, the events of scientific history are based on what came before– centuries’ worth of incremental advancements that would not have been possible if not for the ones that came before. We might think that the medieval era was an intellectual wasteland, but there was a vast array of scientific breakthroughs that were not opposed by the church or by hordes of peasants armed with pitchforks and torches.

Here in the twenty-first century, we might look back with pity at those poor scholars of centuries past who had to make do without calculators and Google, but those scholars still managed to figure things out by memorizing vast amounts of information, learning new languages, doing extensive calculations without even the benefit of pen and paper, and carefully observing the world around them. They were curious about nature and, like us, they looked to the stars. They can’t be blamed for not figuring out the intricacies of the movements of the planets; no one else would until the twentieth century with its massive observatories and radio telescopes.

In The Light Ages, Seb Falk helps advance the work of rehabilitating the reputation of the medieval era, showing how instead of an age of darkness and anti-intellectualism, those centuries from the 1000s to the 1400s helped advance science and technology, and without those advances we would not have the technologies we enjoy today.

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Thank you to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for providing me with a free eBook in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion in any way.

“Rather than a synonym for backwardness, [the term ‘medieval’] should stand for a rounded university education, for careful and critical reading of all kinds of texts, for openness to ideas from all over the world, for a healthy respect for the mysterious and unknown...Why, then, do we persist in belittling the Middle Ages? In part it is certainly to exalt ourselves.“

Seb Falk has written a wonderful, passionate story of scientific curiosity in the Middle Ages. Challenging the frustratingly common misconception of the medieval era as a ‘Dark Ages’ devoid of creativity or innovation, he chronicles the various technological, natural, and intellectual advancements in what he instead dubs the ‘Light Ages.’

The book centers around one fourteenth-century English monk, John Westwyk, and the writings attributed to him. Falk uses this one individual as an entry point into the greater medieval world, covering how medieval scholars approached astronomy, astrology, geometry, natural history, medicine, navigation, time, music, memorization, and more. I appreciated his inclusion of non-Latin-Christians, as he never shied away from the monumental contributions of translators, commentators, writers, inventors, etc. from the Muslim diaspora.

It was perhaps a bit detailed for the average reader, especially if they have little background experience with medieval history or with math/science. I am comfortable with the former, not the latter, so some passages went over my head. But, overall, Falk does a great job drawing from medieval texts and objects to make a compelling and accessible history.

[4/5: Highly recommend for anyone interested in medieval history, the history of science, or both. If you don’t fit either of those but it doesn’t scare you off, give it a chance! It is a fascinating read.]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is challenging pleasure to read, replete with visual and technical detail while maintaining an expository flow. In the vein of titles defending the Middle Ages as more intelligent, sophisticated, and curious than smug renaissance men or moderns either one give them credit for, this is an excellent addition. Focusing loosely as a reference point on the life and work of monk astronomer John Westwyk, there is a right balance of biography in a panoramic larger context. Most fascinating for those dedicated to comprehend them are the passages about our number system and the uses, construction, and operation of medieval clocks and especially the astrolabe. The Light Ages also touches on medieval medicine, giving it some due outside of popular horror stories of crack practices mired in beliefs about humors. Falk's book would be an excellent follow-up for readers of Thomas Cahill, or Violet Moller's The Map of Knowledge. As another corrective to the notion that there was no decent progress, reason, or science between 500 and 1500 (though even these authors, I would think, would have to admit the period around the Fall of the Western Roman Empire WAS anti-intellectual chaos and perhaps being the one little period truly deserving the moniker "Dark Ages") The Light Ages is an insightful and enjoyable discovery.

In the 19th century, Kaiser Wilhelm had a nightmare in which Asians loomed over him as yellow threats. He told others about his dream, and the Yellow Peril came into existence, tarring Asians with the absurd slur of yellow skin ever since. Seb Falk thinks the same sort of thing happened to the Middle Ages, often called the Dark Ages. In his The Light Ages, he follows the life of an English monk to represent the scientific advances that continued to occur, despite the negative adjectives slapped on the era. His passion was the astrolabe, the smartphone everyone had to have. It became indispensible.

The action took place around St. Albans, reputed to be the best school in England in the 1100s. It was progressive enough to save 16 places for Poor Scholars, who paid no fees to attend. Our hero, a monk called John Westwyck, was in and out of the picture there, traveling to other churches within his Benedictine Order, and always, always focused on astronomy, his real passion and life’s work.

The Middle Ages was a time of settling on standards. The various calendars in use converged towards our current system of 12 months with plus or minus 30 days each. Different cultures began the day at sunrise or noon, sunset, or midnight. Some number systems used base 20 or ten or even 60, making figures difficult to understand. For example, the French (base 20) still call 70 sixty-ten, and 80 is four-twenty. Base 60 numbers take a lot of getting used to in print, with their component parts separated by commas. English money made no sense to anyone outside the country until the 1970s, as it stubbornly refused to follow the rest of the world into decimalization until then.

Actual numbers transitioned from Roman numerals to Arabic-Hindu numbers, popularized by Leonardo of Pisa – aka Fibonacci. The systems all coexisted for a long time, requiring the educated to be “bilingual” or “trilingual”: comfortable in all of them and able to switch between them. It was also at this time that English started to compete with Latin, thanks in no small part to Geoffrey Chaucer. Clear winners were not yet evident. It was just the way everything was.

It was a time to leverage the astrolabe, an instrument invented in the Arabic world. It kept improving, until with Westwyk’s help, it could allow the user to tell the time of day, the positions of the planets, the direction north and true north, and much more. It was the smartphone of its day. People wore them hanging from their belts. They became a status symbol, if not a fashion statement. Their encyclopedic data informed legal and medical decisions. And of course, they kept travelers on the right path, often literally. These were all key apps from this one CPU.

Westwyck spent years running up tables of endless tiny numbers, describing the movements of stars and planets throughout the day down to the second. In a time before actual mathematics, observations of great accuracy were the state of the art for scientists. The movement of a star or the moon was so tightly measured, users could tell the time of day to within a minute. In an era when it was assumed that all days had twelve equal daylight hours, summer and winter, this was an order of magnitude higher science.

The astrolabe was an incredibly intricate slide rule. Lining it up with the sun, a plate attached to one side would indicate everything that was possible to know about the universe from that location at that instant. Since the stars looked different at different locations on Earth, interchangeable plates (think floppy disks, if you can) had to be laboriously eked out and etched out for every latitude the end user might find himself in. The encyclopedic knowledge built into every astrolabe was nothing less than astonishing. Never mind that it was perfected by an English monk in the Dark Ages.

But really, the only other major innovation of the era was another measurement device, the mechanical clock. Richard of Wallingford, another St. Albans superstar, (its Abbot in the 1320s) built the world’s most accurate mechanical clock – and by far the most expensive one ever attempted, for his church. Falk calls the mechanical clock the most significant invention of the Middle Ages. This major development changed mankind, and Falk wants credit to go to the Middle Ages. It, along with Westwyk’s work on the astrolabe, made St. Albans the Silicon Valley of the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, the Middle Ages were a time of narrowly focused advances, shrouded in ignorance. Progress was all derivative, not original, Falk admits. It was also the era of Crusades, where ragtag armies were raised, then decimated by dysentery, in a neverending quest to impose Christianity on the western world and the Middle East. It was a time of dueling popes, papal armies and constant wars. The church, as well as local kings, laid siege to walled towns, starving them to submission, or death, or both. The clergy ruled, and ruled absolutely and arrogantly. They would withhold sacraments unless substantial donations were forthcoming. Indulgences could buy a parishioner’s way out of any dilemma in life. And all of the knowledge accumulated in the era seems to have come from monks, as they made up the majority of those who could read and write, and who had the time to pursue their hobbies without fear of starving to death themselves. How much farther ahead mankind could have come without these constraints is outside the scope of the book, which looks at the glass as half full, despite everything.

The icing on the cake was astrology. It was in this era that people like Westwyk devised the divisions of the sky. The final blow was the pie slices of “houses”, in which planets crossed into the purview of 12 different constellations that rotate around the north pole every night. Monks fabricated attributes, values and meanings for these events and cosmological bodies. Far too quickly, the meanings became set in concrete. The suddenly self-evident attributes of planets, cross-fertilized with the suddenly self-evident attributes of constellations, could portend success or failure, sickness or health, life or death. All without even the slightest hint of evidence. Or even theory.

There were philosophers who spoke up, showing there was not only no proof of the significance of the stars in people’s individual lives, but there was no possibility of a faraway star having any effect whatsoever, never mind its presence at a time of day, or month or year, in or outside the star of a constellation. These philosophers were overruled, and ignorance solidified around the unfounded theories. Expertise in the effects of the planets and stars became the key to success around the world. Even Galileo had to produce horoscopes for clients.

In France, 1437 “arbitrators” ruled that: “all physicians and surgeons must have a full almanac, showing the sign of the moon on any day, and which planets it relates to, good or bad. And with it they must have an astrolabe to select, for any day, hour, and fractions of hours, the ascendant sign corresponding to the sign where the moon is, at the hour chosen for bloodletting or laxatives.” People like Westwyk, despite their claimed total devotion to Christianity, were actively complicit in the invention of modern astrology. The astrolabe, a sophisticated instrument of pure observational science, incorporated the nonsense.

As the ignorance took hold, France banned even discussion of alternative/rejected theories. That was in 1277, a couple of hundred years before the Renaissance threw open the doors to other possibilities. So while the Middle Ages was a time when experiments became a way of scientific endeavor, and instruments and gadgets became must-haves, poverty, greed and ignorance still ruled. A tiny minority had the freedom to tinker.

Falk cobbles a biography out of the fragments of evidence that Westwyk even lived. He makes (probably decent) assumptions about where and how he lived, and who he served. But it also gets to be a bit much, as Falk examines Westwyk’s handwriting, spacing and layout of his thoughts on parchment. He guesses what was a last minute addition and what was a correction to an earlier oversight. It becomes tedious at times, because the book is supposed to be about how bright the Middle Ages really were. Westwyk might be an unsung hero, but he did not represent the Middle Ages in any way.

That the book is not always fascinating is a clue. Readers will be left wondering whether Falk made his case.

But the astrolabe still rocked.

David Wineberg

I definitely nerded out while reading this book. It's thoroughly researched but not a dry read. The math bits were even interesting. Never thought I'd say that last sentence! I look forward to getting the hard copy in my hands come November!

A wonderful tour of the misunderstood medieval period of history, viewed through the eyes of a monk of that time. Enough scientific detail to inform, but not bog the reader down, and historical notes and tidbits that entertain. Delightful writing and a fun, at times amusing, walk through the past.

I received The Light Ages as part of a NetGalley giveaway.

Challenging popular and historical notions that the Middle Ages was a time of scientific stagnation or regression, Seb Falk explores the rich world of medieval scientific experimentation and discovery, from astronomy to navigation to timekeeping, and the international network of collaborations (including with non-Christian scientists) that made it possible.

I wish I had more of a science background (in a "history of science" book, I am much more about the history than the science), because he describes scientific concepts that are a bit difficult for me to visualize/understand. It's not a shortcoming, necessarily, but if you're like me and science never really clicked for you, you may just have to power through and take his word for it. All in all, though, Falk's writing style is very accessible and the book's length is manageable as far as nonfiction history goes, which can often turn into massive doorstops. I loved reading about the different "characters" and their lives and discoveries--if anything, I wish we'd had more of that, especially more in-depth exploration of Muslim and Jewish scientists. I liked that I could put and life story to the abstract ideas I was reading about. Histories of science are new to me, and I thought this was an excellent overview of medieval European scientific thought.