Lynn White - Böcker

This study examines the role of technological innovation during the rise of social groups in the Middle Ages

This collection of nineteen essays, their previous publication dates scattered over a long career, is designed to indicate the velocity and variety of the inventiveness visible in medieval engineering and also to explore the relation of technology to the values of western medieval culture. During the Middle Ages, values and the motivations springing from them—even those underlying many activities that to us today seem purely secular—were often expressed in religious presuppositions. Hence this book's title. The conceptual unity of the collection is brought forth in the author's Introduction, "The Study of Medieval Technology, 1924–1974: Personal Reflections." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978 and reissued as a paperback in 1986.

The Transformation of the Roman World: Gibbon’s Problem after Two Centuries, edited by Lynn White, Jr., revisits one of the most enduring questions in historical scholarship: how to understand the decline and transformation of the Roman Empire. Sparked by Edward Gibbon’s monumental The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this volume gathers leading historians to reflect on what has changed in two centuries of research, interpretation, and historical consciousness. By juxtaposing what we now know of the late Roman world with Gibbon’s own intellectual framework and with our modern perspectives, the collection creates a dialogue across time about the nature of historical inquiry itself. The essays address the interplay between fact, interpretation, and self-understanding, showing how each generation rewrites the fall of Rome in its own image.The volume moves across three distinct but interwoven layers: first, a reassessment of what actually occurred in the centuries of Rome’s transformation, illuminated by modern scholarship in archaeology, social history, and late antiquity studies; second, an exploration of Gibbon himself, examining how Enlightenment rationalism, personal temperament, and eighteenth-century assumptions shaped his account; and third, a consideration of the present, reflecting on why contemporary historians perceive the past differently. In combining these vantage points, The Transformation of the Roman World demonstrates that the study of Rome’s decline is not simply an antiquarian pursuit but a mirror through which we see our own intellectual traditions and cultural anxieties. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and readers of Gibbon alike, offering both an updated account of late antiquity and a meditation on history as a discipline of self-discovery.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

The Transformation of the Roman World: Gibbon’s Problem after Two Centuries, edited by Lynn White, Jr., revisits one of the most enduring questions in historical scholarship: how to understand the decline and transformation of the Roman Empire. Sparked by Edward Gibbon’s monumental The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this volume gathers leading historians to reflect on what has changed in two centuries of research, interpretation, and historical consciousness. By juxtaposing what we now know of the late Roman world with Gibbon’s own intellectual framework and with our modern perspectives, the collection creates a dialogue across time about the nature of historical inquiry itself. The essays address the interplay between fact, interpretation, and self-understanding, showing how each generation rewrites the fall of Rome in its own image.The volume moves across three distinct but interwoven layers: first, a reassessment of what actually occurred in the centuries of Rome’s transformation, illuminated by modern scholarship in archaeology, social history, and late antiquity studies; second, an exploration of Gibbon himself, examining how Enlightenment rationalism, personal temperament, and eighteenth-century assumptions shaped his account; and third, a consideration of the present, reflecting on why contemporary historians perceive the past differently. In combining these vantage points, The Transformation of the Roman World demonstrates that the study of Rome’s decline is not simply an antiquarian pursuit but a mirror through which we see our own intellectual traditions and cultural anxieties. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and readers of Gibbon alike, offering both an updated account of late antiquity and a meditation on history as a discipline of self-discovery.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

This collection of nineteen essays, their previous publication dates scattered over a long career, is designed to indicate the velocity and variety of the inventiveness visible in medieval engineering and also to explore the relation of technology to the values of western medieval culture. During the Middle Ages, values and the motivations springing from them—even those underlying many activities that to us today seem purely secular—were often expressed in religious presuppositions. Hence this book's title. The conceptual unity of the collection is brought forth in the author's Introduction, "The Study of Medieval Technology, 1924–1974: Personal Reflections." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978 and reissued as a paperback in 1986.