Edward Grant

Edward Grant (born April 6, 1926) is an American historian of medieval science. He was named a Distinguished Professor in 1983. Other honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as an historian of science.^[1][2]

Biography

Grant is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington. Before arriving at Indiana University in the fall of 1959, Professor Grant taught at the University of Maine and in the history of science program at Harvard University. Professor Grant was twice chair of his department (1973–1979; 1987–1990) where he taught courses on medieval science, natural philosophy and science and religion.^[1] He served as president of the History of Science Society from 1985-86.^[3]

He has received many honors and awards, including the George Sarton Medal in 1992, the most prestigious award given by the History of Science Society that "recognizes those whose entire careers have been devoted to the field and whose scholarship is exceptional."^[1]

Work

In his book The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, Grant discusses the developments and discoveries that culminated in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. He emphasize how the roots of modern science were planted in the ancient and medieval worlds long before the modern period, and that the Christian Latin civilization of Western Europe began the last stage of its intellectual development. One basic factor is how Christianity developed in the West with the establishment of the medieval universities around 1200.^[4]

In God and Reason in the Middle Ages he argues that the Middle Ages acquired an undeserved reputation as an age of superstition, barbarism, and unreason.^[5]

Selected publications

Edward Grant has published more than ninety articles and twelve books, including:

• Physical Science in the Middle Ages (1971)
• Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution (1981)
• Planets, Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (1994)
• The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages (1996)
• God and Reason in the Middle Ages (2001)
• Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (2004)
• A History of Natural Philosophy from the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (2007)

References

External links

• Harvard University Press