Members with This Book
Most Helpful Reviews
see all reviews
Liked It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “C.S. Lewis' final book, detailing the particulars of the discarded image of medieval thought -- that is, the model of the universe believed to be true during the Middle Ages. In this study, Lewis explodes some commonly accepted views of medieval thought and belief. For example, it is widely...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
see all reviews-
1 of 1 members found this review helpful
“C.S. Lewis' final book, detailing the particulars of the discarded image of medieval thought -- that is, the model of the universe believed to be true during the Middle Ages. In this study, Lewis explodes some commonly accepted views of medieval thought and belief. For example, it is widely accepted that people in that age were superstitious, naive, and primitive, thinking that the world was flat and populated with spirits. In actuality, the medieval days were characterized by an obsession with scholarship and order. If a medieval person thought the world was filled with spirits, it wasn't because of primitive responses to natural phenomena they had observed, but rather because they had read it in a book by one of the classical philosophers (or "auctours"), just as they had read that the world was spherical and believed it. And so that age was characterized by an obsession with scholarship, though, as Lewis points out, they were more aware of the imperfection of their understanding than we are today. Lewis also describes the Ptolemaic view of the universe, including the planets and the spherical "heavens" outside of God's heaven. He explores the knowledge held of geography, zoology, human anatomy, medicine, and other related topics in a concise and lucid manner. In his epilogue, he suggests something that is very probably true, though it will leave a bad taste in most modern minds, especially those interested in science: that the cosmology of any age, including this one, is shaped not so much by what new facts we discover, but by what new facts our ever changing biases lead us to discover. In other words, our view of the universe is as much shaped by opinion as it is by fact. All in all, this is a splendid book, a readable and informative picture of the glorious and transcendent image of creation, discarded, yet still at work in the literature of past and present alike. ”
Michael wrote this review Friday, November 14 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I've read this book 3 times now, the first two times in a vain attempt to understand it, but the third time, I think I finally got it. Go read Niel Evernden's The Social Creation of Nature, and then come back and read this book. What Lewis is describing here is a world before there was a concept of Nature, where "Nature was something animate, conscious, and purposeful, of which we too are a part."”
duncan81 wrote this review Saturday, November 3 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
displaying 1-2 of 2
