is that it covers up, deliberately or indavertently, all the other influences upon history, and the various groups and people and ideas that the Great Person (usually a man) needed to get to their greatness ( Read more... )

The latest National Trust for Scotland magazine has a piece of typical modern journalism - light on facts or context, heavy on personal experience and descriptions. The author of it is a journalist who got to spend a day with Clanranald training, with the point being that they are in charge of the battle for next years Bannockburn re-enactment ( Read more... )

It came up in a recent entry that some general sources of information, e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica, don't have up to date or entirely accurate information. I've come across this problem before. It is partly down to the difficulties of condensing thousands of words of information and discussion into a paragraph. It also occurs because either ( Read more... )

E.g. this one about Isaac Newton that was on yesterday. I only found out about it today, and have only the radio times description to go by.
The rational genius who propelled us out of medieval darkness and into the enlightenment” is how they set up Newton at the start of this profile-with-actors. But the programme very much wants us to see ( Read more... )

I've been wanting to get some sort of copy of De anima in arte alchimiae by pseudo-Avicenna for a while, since it's a kind of important link between arabic and european alchemy in the 13th century. However almost no work has been done on it ( Read more... )

I was reminded again recently about the question of sleeping positions in medieval times ( Read more... )

Indicative of the growing influence of an oligarchic faction is teh republic's fiscal policy, which consistently favored the rich. New sources of revenue became necessary to meet rising expenses, especially military expenss, which because of the hiring of mercenaries increased by 1000percent during the fourteenth century. But while the budget ( Read more... )

The point being that the "Scientific revolution" is becoming increasingly untenable as a label for the changes occuring in western europe in the 17-18th centuries. Reading "The jewell house" by Deborah Harkness helps reinforce that point. The number of people practising something little different to what we would call science in Elizabethan ( Read more... )