The Light Ages Review

The idea of the “dark ages” has been, by this point, repeatedly repudiated to the point of being overstated.  It sometimes seems that historians have become so preoccupied with emphasizing that the time period was not “dark” that they neglect to mention some of the legitimate reasons they came to be considered dark in the first place.  Another book simply setting out to prove that this time period was not dark would not have been of interest, therefore, but this one is different.  The Light Ages is billed as a book about science during the European Middle Ages, and that remains of interest to me even now that I’ve finished Impressions.

Unfortunately, calling The Light Ages a book about medieval science is a bit strong.  First of all, there is the matter of understanding just what is meant by “science.”  As the author admits in the introduction, the rigorous process of science as we understand and define it today, combining the three main etymological schools, cannot be said to exist in any stretch of the term during the Middle Ages.  Perhaps the closest was Francis Bacon’s emphasis on empiricism.  That is not the same as saying that knowledge, learning, and observation did not exist, however, and it is this, and especially instrumentation, upon which Falk focuses his book.  This is still of potential interest, and, indeed, parts of it are.

Digging out the interesting parts, though, requires the reader to slog through unnecessary narrative hypotheticals, perhaps the most significant single flaw in the book.  It’s as if an editor, a publisher, or an adviser told Falk that, in order to successfully sell a nonfiction book like this one, it’s necessary to include a connecting narrative through which to present the information.  Lacking a particular, real-world subject about whom sufficient information is known, Falk chose to follow the semi-real, semi-inferred, semi-imagined life of an English monk.  He pops up in the real historical record on occasion, seemingly with an interest in instrumentation, but almost all of the included details about him are invented or assumed by Falk to flesh out the “story,” which serves primarily to obfuscate the information this book purportedly exists to convey.

Nor are the factual descriptions the clearest.  Describing three dimensional geometries in words is complicated, but also a skill to be developed; The Light Ages does not demonstrate that development.  Despite my familiarity with orbits and astronautics, I found Falk’s descriptions of how to use the various instruments, like the astrolabe, which appear in the book’s pages difficult to follow.  If the emphasis is going to be on instruments, more exploration of how they are made and how they come to be would have been useful, as well; all Falk’s efforts to depict the great advances in learning during the “light ages” amounts more to emphasizing that the Europeans, and especially the English at this time, were exceedingly capable and resourceful copyists of other, smarter people from other times and other places.

The greatest insight I drew from The Light Ages has nothing to do with specific instruments or astronomical insights (and, despite alluding to advances in other fields, Falk’s focus is almost exclusively on astronomy and its related instruments, with a few tangents into astrology): people from earlier times were far more connected to and aware of their astronomical environments than we are today.  This is not simply a matter of having more time for stargazing, or there being less light pollution.  It was taken as a matter of course that a typical farmer would at least have the ability to apply astronomical tables from an almanac providing insight for planting and harvesting based on the seasons, as determined by the angle of the sun from the horizon, its deviation from a precise east-west course, and the rotation of the stars in the sky at night.  The operation of an astrolabe to determine the time at different latitudes and different seasons was also commonplace.  Determining the equinox or the solstice, astronomically, was, again, ordinary, despite the complexity involved, the procession of the events with respect to the calendar, and the lack of standardization and precise instruments.

Having such easy access to clocks and calendars, the ubiquity of artificial lighting and climate control, and the rapid spread of standard information from sources of authority have all conspired to render such knowledge and abilities more or less obsolete in most circles.  Even the spherical geometry upon which such calculations are based is not commonly taught any longer.  Despite this, we continue to use insights developed during the middle ages, sometimes without even realizing it.  For instance, one of the axes of the primary coordinate system used in orbital mechanics is based on the same astronomical configuration as it was then.  If Falk spent more time examining ideas like that, rather than diverting into historical fiction, The Light Ages would be a far stronger book.