Edward Grant (April 6, 1926 – June 21, 2020) was an American historian of medieval science. He was a student of Pearl Kibre and Marshall Clagett, and a longtime collaborator with Clagett. He taught at Indiana University for over thirty years beginning in 1959 and co-founded its department of history and philosophy of science and medicine with Norwood Russell Hanson. His honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as a historian of science.

Early life and education

Edward Grant was born on April 6, 1926, in Canton, Ohio, to a Hungarian family. The family moved to New York City when he was six months old, and he grew up in the Bronx. He attended trade school and joined the U.S. Navy 1943–1946,

Career

Grant began his teaching career while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Grant taught briefly at the University of Maine (1957–1958) and in the history of science program at Harvard University (1958–1959). He had two visiting appointments to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

Grant died on June 21, 2020.

Work

Grant's edited volume A Source Book of Medieval Science (1974) was praised as an "admirable anthology" and a "milestone" for the field of study of medieval science by historian of medieval technology Lynn White Jr.

In his book The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts (1996), Grant discussed the developments and discoveries that culminated in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. He emphasized 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 was how Christianity developed in the West with the establishment of the medieval universities around 1200.

In God and Reason in the Middle Ages (2001) he argued that the Middle Ages had acquired an undeserved reputation as an age of superstition, barbarism, and unreason.

Selected publications

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

  • Physical Science in the Middle Ages (1971), originally John Wiley. Reprinted for the series Cambridge Studies in the History of Science, Cambridge University Press. (1978 paperback edition)
  • A Source Book of Medieval Science (1974), edited, Harvard University Press.
  • Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution (1981), Cambridge University Press. (2011 online edition)
  • Planets, Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (1994), Cambridge University Press.
  • The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages (1996), Cambridge Studies in the History of Science, Cambridge University Press.
  • God and Reason in the Middle Ages (2001), Cambridge University Press. (2009 online edition)
  • Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (2004), Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • A History of Natural Philosophy from the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (2007), Cambridge University Press. (2012 online edition)

References

  • Harvard University Press
  • Edward Grant papers, 1950-2001 at the Indiana University Archives.