Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- REASON AND SOCIETY -- PERCEPTIONS OF HISTORICAL EPOCHS -- THE DARK SIDE OF REASON -- THE APPROACH TO REASON IN THIS STUDY -- REASON FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY -- REASON AND REVELATION -- 1 THE EMERGENCE OF A TRANSFORMED EUROPE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY -- CENTURIES OF DISSOLUTION: EUROPE AT ITS NADIR -- THE GRADUAL EVOLUTION TOWARD A NEW EUROPE -- The Revival of the Economy: Agriculture and the Cities -- The Separation of Church and State -- The Papal Revolution -- Education and Learning: The Cathedral Schools -- REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF REASON IN THE NEW EUROPE -- 2 REASON ASSERTS ITSELF -- CHRISTIANITY AND LATE ANTIQUITY -- The Handmaiden Tradition: Christianity Coming to Grips with Pagan Thought -- Saint Augustine and Boethius -- REASON AND LOGIC IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY -- Early Stirrings in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries -- John of Salisbury (ca. 1115-1180) on the Role of Logic -- THEOLOGY -- Theology Turns to Reason: Berengar of Tours, Anselm of Canterbury, and Peter Abelard -- Chapter II -- Chapter III -- The Reaction to the Rationalization of Theology -- The New Theology: The "Four Books of Sentences" of Peter Lombard -- NATURAL PHILOSOPHY -- Adelard of Bath (ca. 1080-1142) -- William of Conches (d. after 1154) -- LAW -- Civil Law -- Canon Law -- 3 REASON TAKES HOLD -- THE LATIN TRADITION OF LEARNING IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES PRIOR TO THE INFLUX OF NEW TRANSLATIONS -- THE TRANSLATIONS -- The Works of Aristotle -- ARISTOTLE'S LEGACY TO THE MIDDLE AGES -- THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY -- The Formation of Europe's Corporate Spirit -- The Curriculum of Medieval Universities -- The Analytical Character of Learning at Medieval Universities -- Scholastic Literature: Form and Example.

Medicine and the Medical Faculties in the Medieval Universities -- Law in the Medieval Universities -- 4 REASON IN ACTION -- THE OLD AND NEW LOGIC -- FORMS OF LITERATURE IN LOGIC -- THE SOPHISM -- Examples of Sophisms: John Buridan, William Heytesbury, and Richard Kilvington -- OTHER THEMES IN MEDIEVAL LOGIC -- THE IMPACT OF LOGIC IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE -- 5 REASON IN ACTION -- WHAT IS NATURAL PHILOSOPHY? -- NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE EXACT SCIENCES -- DOING NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: NICOLE ORESME -- REASON AND THE SENSES IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: EMPIRICISM WITHOUT OBSERVATION -- Personally Observed Experiences -- Thought Experiments -- REASON AND REVELATION: HOW FAITH AND THEOLOGY AFFECTED NATURAL PHILOSOPHY -- Aristotle and the Church -- The Minimal Impact of Theology and Faith on Natural Philosophy -- 6. REASON IN ACTION -- THE NEW THEOLOGY -- Is Theology a Science? -- The "Sentences" of Peter Lombard -- Richard Fishacre (d. 1248) and the New Theology -- The Problems and Questions of the New Theology -- The Condemnation of 1277, God, and the Theologians -- Commentaries on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard -- Reason in Theology: The Role of Logic and Natural Philosophy -- Questions on God's Power: What He Could and Could Not Do -- GOD AND THE INFINITE -- Can God Make an Infinite Entity? -- God and Infinite Space -- The Eternity of the World and the Infinite -- NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THEOLOGY -- How Theologians Used Natural Philosophy in Theological Questions -- Angels and Natural Philosophy -- The Emergence of Analytic Theology: The Importation of Natural Questions into Theology -- The Reaction to Analytic Theology -- 7 THE ASSAULT ON THE MIDDLE AGES -- THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN "AGES OF REASON" -- THE ONSLAUGHT AGAINST SCHOLASTICISM AND THE MIDDLE AGES -- Continental Critics from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century -- English Anti-Aristotelians.

The Philosophes of the Age of Enlightenment -- The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries -- The Larger Context of the Assault on Scholastic Thought -- The Flat Earth -- CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES TOWARD "MEDIEVAL" AND "MIDDLE AGES" -- REDRESSING THE BALANCE -- CONCLUSION -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.