The Map of Knowledge
How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities
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- 7,49 €
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- 7,49 €
Publisher Description
'Violet Moller brings to life the ways in which knowledge reached us from antiquity to the present day in a book that is as delightful as it is readable.' – Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
In The Map of Knowledge Violet Moller traces the journey taken by the ideas of three of the greatest scientists of antiquity – Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy – through seven cities and over a thousand years.
In it, we follow them from sixth-century Alexandria to ninth-century Baghdad. From Muslim Cordoba to Catholic Toledo. From Salerno’s medieval medical school to Palermo, capital of Sicily’s vibrant mix of cultures. And – finally – to Venice, where that great merchant city’s printing presses would enable Euclid’s geometry, Ptolemy’s system of the stars and Galen’s vast body of writings on medicine to spread even more widely.
In tracing these fragile strands of knowledge from century to century, from east to west and north to south, Moller also reveals the web of connections between the Islamic world and Christendom. Connections that would both preserve and transform astronomy, mathematics and medicine from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
Vividly told and with a dazzling cast of characters, The Map of Knowledge is an evocative, nuanced and vibrant account of our common intellectual heritage.
'An endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.' – Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this unusual and well-crafted intellectual history of the medieval "dark ages," when most classical mathematical, medical, and scientific knowledge was at the time widely believed to be lost, British historian Moller extols the roles of seven cities, largely near or along the Mediterranean basin, in the storage (via libraries, monasteries, or private collections), translation, discovery, and transmission of that knowledge. She looks at Alexandria ("the capital of the intellectual world for over a millennium"), Baghdad, Cordoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, and Venice, which had in common "political stability, a regular supply of funding and of texts, a pool of talented... individuals and... an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusivity towards different nationalities and religions." She introduces readers to a host of now-largely-unknown intellectual giants, such as the remarkable 12th-century Italian scholar and translator Gerard of Cremona, who was "a major conduit for the transfer of knowledge of the Arab world to the European." In felicitous style, Moller unearths such fascinating developments as the origins of the dissection of cadavers and existence of women doctors in late medieval Italy. With so many figures and ideas to discuss, some movements, such as Muslim Mu'tazili theology, are referenced without much explanation. But overall, this is an impressive, wide-ranging examination of what might be called premodern intellectual and cultural geography.
