The Light Ages

Medieval Europe is often remembered for its towering cathedrals, holy wars and the plague, yet it also produced the first universities, spectacles and mechanical clocks. Cambridge historian of science Seb Falk uses the life of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk, to show how much learning flourished in that period.

Westwyk, a monk at St Albans Abbey, serves as the guide. Falk follows him as he works through mathematics written in Roman numerals, uses the stars to find his way, treats illness and reads time from an astrolabe. Along the way, the book follows the everyday struggles and small victories of a man living in an uncertain world.

Falk's central argument is that the Middle Ages were not as dark as their reputation suggests. The book traces how medieval ideas still shape the way we understand the natural world today.