Hi Austere,
The objections you have encountered have been around for years. Professional historians of science–especially of Medieval Science–utterly reject and even mock the view of the books you cite.
Among the many here are some sources including the
Cambridge History of Science:
Marcia L. Colish,
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition: 400-1400. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997
David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank, eds.,
Medieval Science, vol. 2 of
The Cambridge History of Science. 8 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013
David C. Lindberg,
The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992
Edward Grant,
Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996
Ronald L. Numbers, ed.,
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, Harvard University Press, 2010.
Some quotes. The one in bold is hilarious.
“Western civilization was created in Medieval Europe. The forms of though and action which we take for granted in modern Europe and America, which we have exported to other substantial portions of the globe, and from which we indeed cannot escape, were implanted in the mentalities of our ancestors in the struggles of the medieval centuries.”
[George Holmes, ed., *The Oxford History of Medieval Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. v]
“Indeed, it was in the early middle ages that the Europe we have inherited was formed.”
[Rosamund McKitterick, ed., *The Early Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 249]
Historians of science David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank note how Carl Sagan, Professor of Astrophysics at Cornell and an avowed atheist, in his famous popularization of science entitled
Cosmos (1980) includes a timeline from the ancient Greeks to the year 2000. Nothing is listed for the Middle Ages. The caption ends referring to the Middle Ages: “The millennium gap in the middle of the diagram represents a poignant lost opportunity for the human species.” (335) Lindberg and Shank comment in their introduction: “
The timeline reflected not the state of knowledge in 1980 but Sagan’s own ‘poignant lost opportunity’ to consult the library of Cornell University, where he taught. In it, Sagan would have discovered large volumes devoted to the medieval history of his own field, some of them two hundred years old. He would also have learned that the alleged medieval vacuum spawned the two institutions in which he spent his life: the observatory as a research institution (Islamic civilization) and the university (Latin Europe).”
[David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank, eds., *Medieval Science, vol. 2 of
The Cambridge History of Science. 8 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, II: 10]
Harvard economist David S. Landis in an interesting chapter entitled “The Invention of Invention” says of the Middle Ages that it was “one of the most inventive societies that history had known.” He goes on to say “Some may be surprised: for a long time one saw these centuries as a dark interlude between the grandeur of Rome and the brilliance of the Renaissance. That cliché no longer holds in matters technological.” He cites the advancement or invention of the water wheel, eyeglasses, the mechanical clock, and gun powder. In conclusion he observes: “Important in all this was the Church as custodian of knowledge and school for technicians.”
[David S. Landes. *The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999, p. 45, 58]
A good example Medieval interest in science is Gerbert of Aurillac (945-1003). A monk and later ordained a priest, he explored and spread the tradition of the classical liberal arts especially logic. In 967 he traveled to Northern Spain to study mathematics and astronomy. He appears to have sought out some Muslim mathematicians and astronomers further south in Cordoba and Seville from which to learn. He returned to northern Europe to teach and promote all he had learned in these subjects including the importance of Hindu-Arabic numerals—indeed he was the first Latin author to teach math using them. His friend and patron was Otto III the Saxon emperor. In 999 he was elected Pope and took the name Sylvester II. Lindberg points out that “it is clear that Gerbert used his influential posts as teacher and church dignitary to advance the cause of mathematical science in the West.” [Lindberg, *Beginnings, p. 190]
