Seb Falk's "The Light Ages" offers a captivating journey through medieval Europe, challenging the common misconception that this era was marked by intellectual stagnation. Instead, Falk highlights a world rich in scientific curiosity, technological innovation, and a deep thirst for knowledge.

The book skillfully weaves together the life of John of Westwyk, a 14th-century monk, with a broader exploration of medieval science. Through John's experiences, we gain insight into the intricate workings of a medieval monastery, the challenges of timekeeping, and the meticulous study of astronomy. Falk effectively uses John’s story as a lens to examine the intellectual landscape of the time, bringing to life the individuals who pushed the boundaries of knowledge.

Falk's writing is engaging and accessible, seamlessly blending historical detail with insightful analysis. He introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, including pioneering clockmakers, ingenious astronomers, alchemists, and astrologers. "The Light Ages" is more than just a book about science; it delves into the lives, beliefs, and relentless pursuit of understanding that characterized this period.

One of the book's greatest strengths is its ability to challenge our preconceived notions about the Middle Ages. Falk convincingly demonstrates that this era was far from a "dark age," but rather a time of remarkable intellectual growth. He highlights significant contributions from medieval thinkers in fields such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, reminding us that the foundations of modern science were laid during this often-overlooked time.

"The Light Ages" is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of science, the Middle Ages, or simply a well-told story. It's a thought-provoking and illuminating work that will leave readers with a newfound appreciation for the intellectual vibrancy of the medieval world.

The narrative of John of Westwyk provides a compelling thread connecting various scientific and technological advancements of the era. Falk's clear and concise prose makes complex topics easy to understand, even for those with no prior knowledge of medieval history or science. The book effectively dismantles the myth of the "Dark Ages," showcasing the intellectual dynamism of the period.

Falk's meticulous research brings the medieval world to life, offering fascinating insights into the lives and work of the people who shaped it. "The Light Ages" is a superb book that offers a fresh and insightful perspective on this fascinating period of history. It comes highly recommended for anyone seeking to expand their understanding of the Middle Ages and the roots of modern science.

This book had the potential to be really good, and in some aspects it was. Clearly the author had put in a colossal amount of time doing the historical research, and some parts were very interesting, however it was FAR too technical / mathematical for the lay person, I didn't understand the drawings and overall I found it to be incredibly complex. There were also far too many Latin quotes which I felt could have been paraphrased or simply explained in modern day English. I ended up reading some passages without properly taking in what I am was reading, as it was mathematically beyond me, unfortunately. Such a pity.
Having said that, I'm sure this book would be of interest to anyone studying the history of science or mathematics.

This was an interesting look at science during the Middle Ages. The author clearly knows his subject inside out and I found his writing engaging and informative.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for giving me this eARC to review.

I will say that I read this a while ago but my review seemed to never go through so I am having to give this review trying to remember a lot of what happened but I do remember how I felt about the book.

Sadly I just couldn't get into this because while it is clear that the author has a love for the light ages, the writing was not engaging for me.

The Light Ages is a fascinating book, completely changing our view of the time period often referred to as The Dark Ages. Seb Falk brings this historic period to life by telling the stories of people who lived at that time, particularly the monks who made such important scientific discoveries. From astronomy to a system for doing complicated maths using fingers bent at the knuckles or straight to turn the body into an abacus, Falk shows how ingenious or ancestors were. I particularly enjoyed the monk determined to demonstrate human flight could be possible, using his own contraptions and leaping from the highest point in the monastery. This would be an ideal gift for somebody who enjoys nonfiction told in a creative way, but is also a great read for those of us who don't usually read nonfiction.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4751298025

It's clear that this book is everything the author loves. However, that doesn't translate into an engaging read and I really struggled to get through this.

Completely enthralling in my opinion. I love to read non fiction but usually in conjunction with fiction, so I usually read in sections, like mini-lessons. This worked well with The Light Ages which is dense with information and fascinating stories. I think I would have found it overwhelming to read all at once. I especially liked that it's a new take on the era.

While I expected this book to be very detail-oriented, found it to be overly pedantic, with heavy prose that was unengaging at the most of times. Not helped by the blocky layout of the paragraphs which made for even more confusing reading. The introduction itself was very long (overly so, imo), but the prose just seemed to get bogged down in all the author wanted to tell the reader, and it did end up feeling like speaking with someone who loves a topic but of which you know nothing about, so much of what they're saying just flies over your head. Sad, because the things described and mentioned are often fascinating. Could have used a better editor, probably

I confess, I will read any book that rehabilitates the Middle Ages and challenges the persistent notion that everything before the 1600s was the "Dark Ages". So, I was bound to love this book anyway.

Seb Falk has delivered a readable and fascinating exposition on all things scientific and mathematical in the period between the 12th and the 15th centuries. I confess that Maths isn't my strong point, and some of the passages relating to trigonometry did go over my head a little. but that didn't put me off. The book was more about demonstrating how important the discoveries, developments and innovations were and how they fitted into the context of the time period: and in some cases, changed the world.
For a debut book it was well written, engaging and memorable. The illustrations and diagrams also serve as a useful guide for the perplexed (and those who just aren't familiar with the subject matter). I enjoyed most of it, but one of my favourite passages came from the conclusion:

“It was in the Middle Ages that Europeans began exploring over the oceans, aided by new technologies of mapping and the magnetic compass. And it was in the Middle Ages that they built complex instruments to model their divinely ordered cosmos. We have seen, too, that religion was no impediment to scientific progress. Time and again we have witnessed medieval Christians respecting and absorbing learning from other faiths without prejudice. Why, then, do we persist in belittling the Middle Ages? In part it is certainly to exalt ourselves.”

The prevailing narrative that Medieval Europe was a stagnant pool of ignorance, superstition and fear of anything that wasn’t familiar or permitted by the church is a useful straw man. One that makes us feel clever and superior, not confront the shortcomings of our own age, and feel comfortable with our cultural prejudices.
If this book doesn’t give you a newfound appreciation for Medieval men and women, and make you question the prevailing narrative I don’t know what will. Now, I’m going to go and preorder the paperback.

Grateful thanks the Publisher Allen Lane for allowing me to read a PDF of this title. All opinions are my own and this review was written of my own volition.

Such an interesting and informative piece. The Information is beautifully presented in an engaging way. This book focuses on the medieval period which is incorrectly referred to as the dark ages. I loved learning new concepts from this intellectually stimulating read

Thank you to NetGalley and Publishers for this ARC

Seb Falk does not disappoint with this book at all. I love anything medieval and was extremely excited when i got the approval to read this book..

This has been so well researched and the notes are impressive, that being said you don't need to have a lot of medieval knowledge in order to read this book.

A fascinating and enthralling book. I certainly learned a lot from reading this, but it is so well-written that there was no sense of being lectured. Definitely a book I will recommend.

“Belief in God never prevented people from seeking to understand the world around them.”

I expected this to be a customary revised history the Dark Ages - "Newsflash: the Dark Ages not so dark" - and then as it progressed, a history of science, but the end result was far more interesting, but certainly not what I had expected - that the scholars of the period had their own science, their own devotion to the scientific method (as they understood it). Neither of these was seen as incompatible with their devotion to God and the Church. However, this is a broad text crossing times and continents, and the work of Arabic scholars in preserving texts and conducting research is given great attention.

Much of the text focuses on one monk's work, who we glimpse through the historical records available, and his advances, and journeys display the inspiring breadth of the text. (This also acted as a reminder that whilst we can know so much about a period, we are limited to glimpses of personal detail.)

The book details the origins of Natural Philosophy, that the natural world could be understood by observation, and if understood then its future workings predicted. (The term is still used for degrees at Oxford and Aberdeen.) Just as the world was seen as bearing the mark of the divine hand, so this was now physically seen in the origin of sundials and clocks.

Just as monks marked the praise of God at particular hours with specific texts and psalms, these now clearly corresponded to the passage of time throughout the day. If one can understand magnetic direction, the weather and the tides, one can begin to master sea travel, planting, farming and other advances

The book covers a tremendous amount of material - memorisation, astronomy, the relationship between light and sight, the limitations of Aristotelianism, the mobility of scholars and scholarship throughout Europe; the development of medical science; and the impact of the Crusades.

This book was also full of delightful anecdotes - such as the curiously open relationship between ritual magic and monastic practices; that one of the abbeys in England was built to line up to the dying rays of Michaelmas, but also more sobering ones, such as the likelihood that a particular direction of numerical research was ended because those practising it presumably died during the Black Death.

“Rather than a synonym for backwardness, [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 the unknown.”

I commend this book, most especially because whilst I found the opening chapters a struggle - and stopped early on for about eight weeks - to read it through felt like a proper stretch of the brain, like being back at university and attending a seminar. (I envy the students of the History of Science Dept in Cambridge having the author for their tutor.) However, like other readers, I sometimes found level of detail at times overwhelming. I struggled with the amount of attention paid to the astrolabe and the various numerical equations. I’m afraid that this means I would be unlikely to buy it as a gift.

This is a popular book, rather than an academic text, but it is certainly at the higher end. The book takes complicated material and topics that I would not necessarily find interesting and opens them up to the non-specialist. It guides the reader, chapter by chapter. I think it’s a shame that more academics don’t write books like these, books that take the subject matter seriously, and leave you feeling you’ve had a true education by the end.

I have to admit I didn;t get along with this book. I know it isn't a fiction book and I wasn't expecting it to be but I found it hard going and didn;t finish it. Nothing against the book or the author, just not to my tastes, I much prefer fictional historical books.

'The Light Ages' is a fascinating and novel look at what is wrongly called the Dark Ages. The age is examined in exquisite detail and if you enjoy the technical side of history as well as the human interest you will love this book. I really enjoyed the focus around one man, especially one who is not well known. I learned so much and will never think of them as Dark Ages again.

The Dark Ages is a term still used – although maybe not as often as it used to be – for the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, bringing to mind images of people living in an intellectual darkness, a time when little scientific progress and cultural advancement took place. In The Light Ages, historian Seb Falk dispels this idea by showing how this period was actually a time of discovery, invention and learning, and that the word medieval ‘rather than a synonym for backwardness 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.’

Instead of concentrating on the work of famous historical figures, Falk has chosen to focus on a man whose name is probably unfamiliar to most of us: Brother John of Westwyk, a monk who lived in the late fourteenth century. Although there’s a lot we still don’t know about John, Falk takes us through the known facts and uses his general knowledge of the period to flesh things out, describing what John’s life may have been like at St Albans Abbey where he was ordained and outlining the type of education he would have received at Oxford University. Later, John continued his mathematical and astronomical studies at Tynemouth Priory and then went on crusade with Henry le Despenser in 1383 before returning to London where he produced his biggest scientific accomplishment:

"He had made an equatorium – an equation-solver, a computer – and he was calibrating it to give the precise positions of the planets."

I won’t pretend that I understood the descriptions of John Westwyk’s famous Equatorie of the Planetis (once believed to have been the work of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer) – like a lot of the information in this book, it went completely over my head. However, before we get to the discussion of the Equatorie, Falk explores several of the other scientific, mathematical and astronomical advancements and discoveries that made such an invention possible. The topics covered include the Babylonian base-60 system of numbering, the development of early clocks, mapping and the magnetic compass, and the functions of the device known as the astrolabe. Some of it is fascinating (did you know how to count to 9,999 on your fingers?), but there are also a lot of geometric diagrams, equations and calculations that will probably be of much more interest to people with a background in physics and mathematics than to the general reader.

"A line runs from the Middle Ages to modern science. It is not an unbroken line, of course, and certainly not straight. But if you struggled with any of the trigonometry in earlier chapters, you will admit that medieval people – who carried out such painstaking calculations without the help of any electronics – were not stupid."

Although the book often became too technical for me, I did enjoy all the insights we are given into medieval life. I loved the image of John trying to work on his astronomical tables in his room in St Albans while pigs roam the streets outside:

"According to local tradition, pigs too small to sell were donated to the hospital. As they trotted through the streets, Londoners fed them up from runts to valuable livestock, in small but frequent gestures of civic charity. The hospital marked its porcine property with bells to prevent their confiscation and deter theft. For John Westwyk, though, the grunting and clanging from the street cannot have aided his attempts to comprehend Ptolemaic planetary theory."

The Light Ages has clearly been thoroughly researched, drawing on medieval documents and essays ranging from Pierre le Pèlerin’s Letter on the Magnet to Bernard of Gordon’s Lily of Medicine and making occasional diversions to other parts of the world to discuss the impact of the Crusades or to highlight the work of the Persian polymath, Tusi, to give a few examples. For readers who want to explore further, there’s a large selection of primary and secondary sources provided at the end of the book. This wasn’t the ideal book for me as I would have preferred something slightly less academic, but for the right reader I’m sure it would be a wonderful read!

I have always been mystified by the term ‘the Dark Ages’. Cambridge historian Seb Falk obviously felt there was a need to change people’s opinions of this period. There is no doubt from his research: this era was a hotbed of scientific thought, and wondrous inventions. He also shows the international collective reasoning that tried to establish the why and how of our world.

This tour de force of a book collects evidence across several centuries. Falk often delves into obscure original manuscripts, or contemporary copies. Notes, references and further commentary take up 20% of the book’s length. That may help relax you as you start tackling the vagaries of addition and multiplication in Roman numerals. That was the common practice at the start of this period. Introducing Indo-Arabic numbers must have been a bigger revolution than decimalisation! I can multiply in pounds, shillings and pence, and in stones, pounds and ounces. We learnt this in primary school. You may well be completely baffled by the monk’s way of counting: in 60s – the quinquegessimal system. I sort of got the hang of it, but at a cost of completely losing the plot of the book. And I think this was still chapter one.

The problem with the book? The ease in which the author dives from one subject to another, in very long chapters. When you reflect on the whole they make some sense, but at the time of first reading, seem completely random. Yes, he is taking the obscure monk John of Westwyk. He is filling in the world he lived in as he moves through his monkish path. But he leaps from Chaucer (with quotes in Chaucerian English), to the Pope of the time, and then his twice removed predecessor. These are trials of memory and understanding. These may have been taxed enough by the detailed examination of copying manuscripts, or the role of an Arabic scientist in learning to build armillary spheres.

By the time we got to the summing up–which I recognised as such, because I suddenly understood what he’d been talking about beforehand–I had lost enthusiasm. The problem is, I think, that as the author says: schools teach the Dark Ages simply as strings of kings and battles, with occasional explanation of why they were fighting. This was probably a Victorian invention (along with ‘not invented here’ which wiped out the Islamic contribution). It turns out (to me, you probably know this) that the Crusades were entirely driven by the Catholic popes. By the time of the crusade that our monk John went on, the Pope was paying them in remission of sins (i.e. ticket to heaven) for participation in a war against people who merely disagreed with the pope’s way of running the christian world. I’ve made that very simplistic.

So I did find the Light Ages interesting, but not as a whole. And it was very much worth switching from reading on my kindle, to reading on my app on my iPad. The illustrations changed from pretty much unintelligible, to something much better. I think as a reference book, this book belongs on the bookshelf. I recommend all libraries – and all school, college and science libraries, hold at least one copy. After all, if it wasn’t for Seb Falk, Merton College library would still have one of the priceless contemporary copies of an early scientific instrument consigned to a cupboard and labelled ’round table?’

One for science and history enthusiasts, but check out an ebook copy visually before you buy it.

For full transparency: I myself am a medieval researcher and, tangentially, know the author. When I heard the premise of this book I was extremely excited, and Falk does not disappoint - this was a story that urgently needed to be told. Falk's work is an excellent example of rigorous academic research that has been written, and made interesting, to a non-specialist audience. Falk creates a compelling narrative. He humanises his discussion of medieval science not only by grounding his discussion in the joy he finds in his own research, but by sharing the story of one medieval individual: monk and astronomer John Westwyck. The extensive and accessible notes for further reading are impressive, ensuring 'The Light Ages' is a starting point for interested readers rather than the final word.

Many of us have heard people claiming that the Dark Ages were not so dark after all. The notion that the medieval period was full of superstition with little advancement of science and progress is apparently a myth. Seb Falk attempts to explore this in detail, demonstrating with many examples, some easier than others to follow, why the Dark Ages were a fascinating period full of light. It is a fascinating book that touches on many subjects: religion, science, astronomy, technology, etc. If you believe that medieval times were gloomy and have set humanity back, I would suggest you give Falk's book a chance.

Yes, illuminating, but not necessarily in the way the author wants - the maths and science of the astrolabe brought back too many memories of my repeated failures in GCE Maths, but the passing references to scholars from so many different countries and cultures were more than enough to convince me that the Dark Ages weren't that dark at all. Cross-cultural activities seemed to have been something that was just part of the intellectual scenery of the day. Quite re-assuring to think that it could happen without the oversight of the European Union, and that it will continue happening after January 2021