Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: An Encyclopedia

625 Pages·2017·35.688 MB·English

by  Thomas F. Glick, Steven J. Livesey, Faith Wallis

Routledge Revivals
Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine
First published in 2005, this encyclopedia demonstrates that the millennium from the fall of the Roman Empire to
the Renaissance was a period of great intellectual and practical achievement and innovation. In Europe, the Islamic
world, South and East Asia, and the Americas, individuals built on earlier achievements, introduced sometimes radical
refinements and laid the foundations for modern development.
Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine details the whole scope of scientific knowledge in the medieval period in
more than 300 A to Z entries. This comprehensive resource discusses the research, application of knowledge, cultural
and technology exchanges, experimentation, and achievements in the many disciplines related to science and tech-
nology. It also looks at the relationship between medieval science and the traditions it supplanted.
Written by a select group of international scholars, this reference work will be of great use to scholars, students, and
general readers researching topics in many fields, including medieval studies, world history, history of science, history
of technology, history of medicine, and cultural studies.

Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine
An Encyclopedia
Edited by
Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis
Firstpublishedin2005
byRoutledge
Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2016byRoutledge
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M S
EDIEVAL CIENCE,
T M
ECHNOLOGY, AND EDICINE

A N E N C Y C L O P E D I A
Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey, Faith Wallis,
Editors
New York London
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Published in 2005 by Published in Great Britain by
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001_025 (Roman) Prelims 7/21/05 12:46 PM Page 5
C
ONTENTS
Introduction vii

Acknowledgements xi
Contributors xv
Alphabetical List of Entries xix
Entries by Theme xxiii
Entries A–Z 1
Index 531
v

001_025 (Roman) Prelims 7/21/05 12:46 PM Page 7
I
NTRODUCTION

The focus of this volume—science, technology and medicine in the Middle Ages—reflects a discipline that is barely a
century old. For in late autumn 1903, when the French physicist and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem began his
investigations of the development of statics, he very much embraced the popular wisdom of the day, that there had been
no science until the Renaissance. By the time he published the first volume of Les origines de la statique (Paris: A.
Hermann 1905–1906), Duhem had encountered the work of Jordanus Nemorarius, whose writings he took to
anticipate the work of Leonardo da Vinci (the subject of another of Duhem’s historical investigations [1906-1913]). The
subtitle of the Leonardo volume—ceux qu’il a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu—underscores the dramatic shift that Duhem
continued to pursue until his death in 1916: that early modern science did not arise ex nihilo, but instead was the
product of a long history that stretched back into the Middle Ages.
In the intervening century since the publication of Les origines, Duhem has been rightly criticized for many of his
historical and methodological constructions, but one that underlies many of them was his belief in the strong similarity
if not virtual identity of the scientific enterprise in the Middle Ages and the early modern world. When
he read Buridan’s accounts of impetus, he could see classical theories of inertial motion; when he found
formulations of the mean-speed theorem, he observed its later role when v = at; and when he read fourteenth-
century hypothetical discussions of diurnal terrestrial motions, he could see their consequences in the Copernican debate.
While Duhem’s investigations were largely confined to the physical sciences—after being offered a Parisian chair in
history of science late in life, he declined it because he considered himself primarily a physicist—the same early histori-
ographical inclinations mutatis mutandis may be seen in the other two areas explored by this volume. In particular,
scholars of Duhem’s generation often used terms “science,” “technology,” and “medicine” in a sense that implied, if not
explicitly stated, the congruence of those terms with their modern counterparts. Medicine poses its own particular prob-
lems in this respect. This is because medicine itself is both science and technology—a system of ideas, but also a system
of practices spread across a wide range of social actors. But scholarship in medieval medicine also has a complex
history, one profoundly shaped by the modern medical profession and its sense of corporate confidence, based on the
identity of medicine and science. The pioneering scholarship on medieval medicine in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was largely carried out by physicians themselves, often working within institutes of medical history
embedded in university medical faculties. In consequence, medical history was accused by professional historians, some-
times unfairly, of being antiquarianism, or worse, Whig history. In the case of medieval medicine, the general prejudices
against the Middle Ages seemed to encourage the tendency of this style of history towards self-congratulatory
presentism. Most importantly, the older medical history was exclusively the story of doctors, or of institutions now
controlled by doctors, such as hospitals. Non-physicians who worked on medieval themes gravitated towards editions
of medical texts (particularly vernacular texts, and often edited by scholars of medieval literature).
vii