Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe: A review

As a historian of the Middle Ages who studies healing, I teach a surprising amount of medieval science. Since science is not my main field, however, I am always looking for new books to expand my own knowledge and engage my students.

I read John Freely’s Before Galileo with enthusiasm and appreciated its many strengths. Of first importance: His prose is readable. Too often, books about ancient and medieval science unconsciously adopt the tone and—even more excruciating—the syntax of ancient and medieval writers. Reading them becomes a laborious trudge. Freely’s book, even when he explains complex theories and experiments, never feels ponderously academic. The lightness of his prose comes in part from his facility with the ancient and medieval examples he uses. “The Experimental Method” chapter, with its discussion of magnets, is an especially strong example.

Freely also knows how to choose engaging details. Whereas the story of science before Galileo is not as common as the story of science after Galileo, it is still a story that has been told by many historians and scientist–historians. Freely’s examples make the subject feel fresh. While introducing major figures in Greek science, for instance, he highlights Dioscorides’s use of cannabis in his pharmacology. That kind of humorous detail would definitely help my students remember a long Greek name in a chapter full of long Greek names.

I also appreciated his personal anecdotes of teaching and discussions with his colleagues. They made the book feel like a good conversation. For example, his impressions about the changing ways of teaching the theory of the rainbow gave me insight into the work and thoughts of modern scientists.

However, his insights about science teaching also explain some of the trouble I have with Before Galileo. The book places too much focus on why various theories were “wrong” according to modern standards. To give one brief but noteworthy example, he begins a critique of Ptolemy in this way: “One major defect of his work is . . . " Whereas negative phrases like “major defect” can seem innocuous, their repeated use reinforces students’ common misconception that ancient and medieval scholars were stupid because they didn’t get it right and that modern scholars are smart because they fixed the problem. Freely tries to avoid that outcome by using positive language about ancient and medieval scholars’ reasoning techniques. Still, the burden of his language undermines early scientific achievements.

Freely also uses teleological phrasing, such as “this would become the basis of modern dynamism.” To be fair, he overtly presages his teleological intent in his introduction, where he asserts that he will study scholars who paved the way for modern discovery. Nevertheless, I find certain disadvantages to the approach. First, he doesn’t clearly trace the history of ideas like dynamism from ancient to modern. Since he covers all of medieval science, space constraints necessitate that he simply mention the correlation and then press on. Second, his teleological phrases reinforce the message that the ideas of ancient and medieval scholars’ matter only in relation to modern, “correct” ways of viewing the world. That emphasis leaves little room for thinking about those ideas in critical context, as science that addressed issues and needs of its time. Again, although Freely acknowledges that we ought to consider scientific approaches before Galileo important, he undermines his own stated desire to “right this historical injustice” that leaves out scholars before Galileo.

Finally, for Freely, historical context is at times haphazard. He includes dates, places, and tempting details about the scholars, but not enough cultural and social history for readers to anchor the figures in their communities and time periods. The book does take a roughly chronological approach, which makes it easy to read. And it does not indulge in as much historical fantasy as, for instance, James Hannam’s Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (2011). But for teaching, I need more meaningful engagement with other aspects of history. And although Freely’s knowledge and use of Charles Burnett’s and David Lindberg’s work on Jewish scholars and science in the Arabic-speaking world is impressive, I need textbooks that offer and engage new ideas in that area. His dusty treatment of Arabic preservation and transmission of Greek ideas to Europe just does not capture the impact of a spiritual and scientific thinker like Ibn Sina (Avicenna ), to whom Freely devotes only about a half-page.

All in all, although I enjoyed Before Galileo, I won’t assign it to students as a text. A. C. Crombie’s two-volume History of Science from Augustine to Galileo (1996), although not as readable, is still better at treating ancient and medieval science as products of a different worldview, in which its practitioners asked and answered questions about their surroundings. I also enjoy Edward Grant’s Science and Religion, 400 BC to AD 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (2006). Although not a popular book, it also doesn’t read like a classic textbook and provides more useful context than Freely’s work.

I will retain John Freely’s Before Galileo for my own reading, and I will cite its examples and details in my classes. I can recommend it to those interested in a good conversation about ancient and medieval science. But its teleology and presentism make me hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly.

Nicole Archambeau is a lecturer in the history and religious studies departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She spent two years teaching medieval history at the California Institute of Technology and is working on a book about the social history of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War titled Souls under Siege: Surviving Plague, War, and Confession in the Fourteenth Century.