![]() ![]() Medieval thinkers also sought to build on the learning of earlier ages, despite viewing pre-Christian writers with a whiff of suspicion. This was not an age that abhorred novelty or an age of narrow conformity, but one in which the latest ideas were hotly debated. ![]() Falk speaks of the “irresistible medieval drive to tinker, to redesign, to incrementally improve or upgrade technology” and the same was true of scientific thought. Far from being resistant to foreign ideas, medieval thinkers systematically translated works from Greek, Hebrew and Arabic by writers from Iberia to Persia. And the same applies to medieval scientific thinking, which was complex, interconnected and wide-ranging. But a mushroom is just the visible surface growth of a larger organism. He points out that several accounts of the history of science begin sometime around 1600, as though scientific inquiry just popped out of the ground like a mushroom. In The Light Ages, Seb Falk unpicks many of these popular assumptions. But the wider audience likely assumes it means something barbaric, unspeakable – a punishment from “the dark ages”. Any medievalist watching Pulp Fiction would assume that Zed’s ass was being offered great works of art, rich and strange literary works, relentless invention, scientific inquiry and foundational philosophy. The precise nature of this punishment is never revealed. ![]() I n Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction film, Marcellus Wallace tells Zed that he is going to “ get medieval on your ass”. ![]()
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