Science, Nature, and Scholarship in the Early Middle Ages
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Dept. of Theology and Religion, Durham Univ.
Organizer Name
Helen Foxhall Forbes
Organizer Affiliation
Durham Univ.
Presider Name
Guy Halsall
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of York
Paper Title 1
Thunderbolts and Lightning Really Aren't That Frightening: Reporting the Weather in Carolingian Annals
Presenter 1 Name
Julie A. Hofmann
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Shenandoah Univ.
Paper Title 2
Thinking about Theology and Science in the Insular World
Presenter 2 Name
Helen Foxhall Forbes
Start Date
15-5-2016 8:30 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 211
Description
This session seeks to explore how science and nature were studied and discussed in early medieval scholarship with a view to exploring how medieval thinkers responded to the natural world, and how they sought to understand and interpret natural phenomena. In particular, a key focus of this session will be evidence and how it was used, understood and interpreted by scholars in the early Middle Ages. It is often assumed that early medieval scholars relied only on Scripture (and some inherited classical learning) for their interpretations of the natural world, but recent work has demonstrated both the importance of evidence drawn from observation in the early middle ages and the range of different types of questions and methods that early medieval scholars used. This session will offer an opportunity to reconsider the place of early medieval science – often thought (incorrectly!) to be almost non-existent – and its relationship to contemporary scholarship and to the transmission of knowledge and ideas.
Helen G. Foxhall Forbes
Science, Nature, and Scholarship in the Early Middle Ages
Bernhard 211
This session seeks to explore how science and nature were studied and discussed in early medieval scholarship with a view to exploring how medieval thinkers responded to the natural world, and how they sought to understand and interpret natural phenomena. In particular, a key focus of this session will be evidence and how it was used, understood and interpreted by scholars in the early Middle Ages. It is often assumed that early medieval scholars relied only on Scripture (and some inherited classical learning) for their interpretations of the natural world, but recent work has demonstrated both the importance of evidence drawn from observation in the early middle ages and the range of different types of questions and methods that early medieval scholars used. This session will offer an opportunity to reconsider the place of early medieval science – often thought (incorrectly!) to be almost non-existent – and its relationship to contemporary scholarship and to the transmission of knowledge and ideas.
Helen G. Foxhall Forbes