The Map of Knowledge

April 1, 2019
In this unusual and well-crafted intellectual history of the medieval “dark ages,” when most classical mathematical, medical, and scientific knowledge was at the time widely believed to be lost, British historian Moller extols the roles of seven cities, largely near or along the Mediterranean basin, in the storage (via libraries, monasteries, or private collections), translation, discovery, and transmission of that knowledge. She looks at Alexandria (“the capital of the intellectual world for over a millennium”), Baghdad, Cordoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, and Venice, which had in common “political stability, a regular supply of funding and of texts, a pool of talented... individuals and... an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusivity towards different nationalities and religions.” She introduces readers to a host of now-largely-unknown intellectual giants, such as the remarkable 12th-century Italian scholar and translator Gerard of Cremona, who was “a major conduit for the transfer of knowledge of the Arab world to the European.” In felicitous style, Moller unearths such fascinating developments as the origins of the dissection of cadavers and existence of women doctors in late medieval Italy. With so many figures and ideas to discuss, some movements, such as Muslim Mu’tazili theology, are referenced without much explanation. But overall, this is an impressive, wide-ranging examination of what might be called premodern intellectual and cultural geography.

April 1, 2019
How ideas survived in the ancient world. When Moller (Oxford in Quotations, 2014, etc.) was a young historian in England, she wondered "what had happened to the books on mathematics, astronomy and medicine from the ancient world. How did they survive? Who recopied and translated them?" To provide some answers, the author meticulously and enthusiastically unwinds the "dense, tangled undergrowth of manuscript history" in seven cities. Each had the political stability that allowed scholarship to flourish and scholars, the "stars of the story," to locate, translate, and transcribe rare works of literature and science. The first stop on her map of knowledge is the "intellectual heart of the ancient world," Alexandria, home to a magnificent library and the city where Euclid wrote his Elements around 300 B.C.E. and Ptolemy his Almagest a few centuries later. Galen visited Alexandria but wrote his major works on medicine around 160 C.E. in Pergamon. By 500, Alexandria was floundering, and the fate of these texts written on papyrus was uncertain. In the ninth century, "knowledge flowed into Baghdad from every direction." Scholars were busy translating manuscripts from Greek into Arabic using a new product, paper, while working in Baghdad's many public libraries. Córdoba became the "new axis around which the world of scholarship revolved," drawing scholars from far and wide. Moller enlivens her history with stories about young scholars who dedicated their lives to preserving these valuable texts, like Gerard of Cremona, whose Latin translation of the Almagest in Toledo was the "first to be widely disseminated in Europe." In the eleventh century, Salerno was the "most advanced centre of medieval learning in the whole of Europe." The author's wonderful journey of discovery ends in Venice. In the 1350s, Petrarch studied Greek there to translate classical texts. By 1500, it was a major center of book publishing. The legacies of Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, and others were now secure. A dramatic story of how civilization was passed on and preserved.

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May 1, 2019

Arabic transmission was key to preserving Greek and Roman thought for the millennium that separated the fall of the Western Roman Empire (500 CE) and the Renaissance in Europe. Additionally, argues historian Moller (Oxford in Quotations), this massive and singularly important contribution to the development of science and learning was, and still is, ignored by the very beneficiaries of so much effort. For simplicity's sake, the author traces three exemplar Greek works: Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's Almagest, and the medical corpus of Galen, as well as the development of key cities where these works were preserved across time. While the present neglect of Arabic contributions by academics might be overstated, this work does shine a light on what many readers still regard as the "dark ages" and corrects the dubious (and too widespread) notion that non-Europeans have not contributed significantly to world progress. Overall, this fascinating and accessible work of scholarship highlights a number of major figures who deserve the same attention as those whose ideas they preserved and expanded. VERDICT This will be enjoyed by readers of the history of science and medieval studies, with some crossover appeal to classicists. [See Prepub Alert, 11/12/18.]--Evan M. Anderson, Kirkendall P.L., Ankeny, IA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019

Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's The Almagest, and Galen's medical studies: three essential Greek texts thankfully not lost but passed like torches of knowledge through seven cities (e.g., Baghdad, Cordoba) finally to ignite the Renaissance.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.