Were the Dark Ages Really That Dark?
By: Jason Park
Tags: Science, Innovation, History, Books, Reading

Were the Dark Ages Really That Dark?

A review of Seb Falk’s *The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science*

The Dark Ages. The Middle Ages. Medieval times. Those are the descriptors historians use for the time from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in roughly A.D. 476 (the Eastern Roman Empire stuck around for almost 1000 years more) to the Renaissance in the 1300s and 1400s. All of those terms have taken on a derogatory meaning, as the time period has been seen as devoid of the science, art, culture, and “civilization” (whatever that truly means) that characterized the Greeks and especially the Roman Empire.

This characterization is heavily countered in Seb Falk’s new book, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science. As the subtitle implies, Falk lasers in on science in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and skillfully shows that medieval science was much more advanced than is often credited. To achieve this, he takes the perspective of one man who lived a fairly normal life in medieval Europe and, despite not being famous in his time or ours, is connected to many of the advancements of the time period: John of Westwyk. By using John’s perspective, Falk anchors his analysis in a specific place and figure but still retains the flexibility to branch out into a discussion of medieval science at large. It’s a highly effective decision that adds to the book in numerous ways.

The most surprising of the innovations is the most low-tech of all, while at the same time “digital”: a counting system that Europeans used for science, math, and commerce that goes to 9,999 and can be shown on ten fingers! Falk explains succinctly:

How did monks like Bede do decimal arithmetic on their hands? Hold your hands up with your palms facing away from you and your thumbs together. Start on the left, with the three outside fingers of your left hand. Those three fingers, bent fully, partially or not at all, combine to represent the units from one to nine. That is why the technical term for integers was digiti, the Latin for fingers — and hence our numerical ‘digits’ and digital technology. Next, multiples of ten were shown using different shapes made by bending the left thumb and forefinger over one another (the Latin for tens was articuli, which also meant knuckles). The hundreds column is the right thumb and forefinger, and thousands are on the last three fingers of your right hand. Numbers from 0 to 9,999 can be thus shown using two hands.

Fascinating! But why do you start on the left with the smallest numbers? That’s the opposite of how we write numbers. And what uses does this organized counting method possibly serve?

There were two reasons to use your left hand for the smallest numbers. First, it meant that the number could be read correctly by someone facing you, from their left to right. These hand gestures were about communication as much as counting. They could be used in the marketplace, where noise or language could prevent conversation, or in the monastery, where silence was often required. Bede even suggested that the numbers could be used as an alphanumeric code to pass messages in dangerous situations. The second reason for starting with the left hand was so, if the calculation involved only numbers below one hundred, your right hand was free to take notes, point or demonstrate. Bede’s perfectly practical system came directly from the classroom, where monks also learned to use their hands to help them memorise musical theory and locate days and dates in the cycles of the Sun and Moon.

Yes, there are medieval finger counting posters available on Amazon

This is a pretty good start to show the advanced nature of Western European science during the Middle Ages. But wasn’t the rest of the world much more advanced? Falk doesn’t approach this directly (the biggest missed opportunity of the book, in my opinion), but he does outline several examples of innovations in China, India, and/or the Dar al-Islam that were adopted in medieval Western Europe. An impressive chapter is devoted to the astrolabe, a Muslim invention. Ample space is given to the work of polymath Mohammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, from whose name we get the word “algorithm”. India is given rightful credit for our inaccurately-named “Arabic” numeral system. But Falk is clear that some Western Europeans, especially monks, knew how to use these innovations and sometimes created them anew with “Eastern” knowledge as a starting point. Case in point, the mechanical clock:

What defines the mechanical clock — and excludes most of the water-based devices which had been used worldwide and developed over millennia — is its reliable, self-regulating driving mechanism. (I say ‘most’ because water-based clockwork mechanisms had been used to power astronomical devices in China for over three hundred years. These were not fully mechanical, relying in part on a constant flow of water, and do not seem to have spread beyond a few outstanding examples. Nevertheless, they remind us how often an invention that at first appears revolutionary turns out on closer inspection to be hard to distinguish from a long history of incremental improvements; in this case, the ever more creative Chinese uses of water to power astronomical clockwork.)

That is what sets Falk’s work apart from others on the topic. He goes into detail on the scientific accomplishments of Western Europe (of which there are many) but also shows the undercurrent of Asian and North African scientists that were inevitably more advanced. For more on this specific topic, check out the classic Crash Course World History episode that explores the “Dark Ages” in a more global context. I was expecting a book more along the lines of that, focused on the Islamic and Chinese innovations happening at the same time, but I was more surprised by Falk’s unearthing of a proto-scientific society that currently remains underappreciated because of its lack of a strong historical empire. The Light Ages is one step along the path to correcting that assumption.

I received a review copy of The Light Ages courtesy of W.W. Norton and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.