Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Pima County Public Library.
Mar 06, 2017phantomas rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I have often read books that described the romantic process of learning where students studied in the day, and argued all night in cafes. For me, this process of argument where everything is challenged in a reasoned discussion is why I went to university. So imagine my delight at finding a book that took me back to a time when some of the greatest minds the world have ever known were rediscovering the ancient knowledge of Greece. The thinker Al-Farabi, the founder of Muslim Neoplatonism. The brilliant Persian polymath, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who wrote the medieval canon on medicine. Also Ibn Rushd (Averroës), who commented on Aristotle. And among them, Moses Maimonides, the Jewish mystic whose writings remain a core element of Jewish law and culture . Scholarship flourished in the fields of medicine, philosophy, law, geography, architecture, and mathematics. Walking Drum first describes the process of translating the original document into Arabic, and then the intellectual synthesis with current understanding, but then the book goes further, by showing cross-cultural pollination as the Christian invaders of Spain are also exposed to these ideas. Viewed through the eyes of Kerbouchard (the main character), this magical world where an autodidact could learn anything and everything, had me writing down every book mentioned. As he states, "In knowledge lay not only power but freedom from fear, for generally speaking one only fears what one does not understand. It was a time when all knowledge lay open to him who would seek it, and a physician was often an astronomer, a geographer, a philosopher, and a mathematician." If you would like to understand Kerbouchard's memory place method, read De Umbris Idearum written by Giordano Bruno.