A fascinating book following the traces of a C14th monk named John of Westwyk, for whom the period was not one of darkness but of wonderful illumination and discovery.
Humane and witty ruminations on science, history, philosophy and politics by the bestselling physicist: Dante's universe, Nabokov's butterflies, Einstein's errors, etc.
Explores the growth of Greek medicine from the early references in Homer to the flowering its Hippocrates and subsequent influence on the Islamic world and early modern Europe.
Huygens developed the theory of light travelling as a wave, invented the mechanism for the pendulum clock, and discovered the rings of Saturn - via a telescope that he had also invented. His... read more
Its second subtitle is "an adventurous history of botany". JG is a scientist and an historian of exploration (his "The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea" was excellent).