A History Of Balance 1250-1375

The ideal of balance and its association with what is ordered, just, and healthful remained unchanged throughout the medieval period. The central place allotted to balance in the workings of nature and society also remained unchanged. What changed within the culture of scholasticism, between approximately 1280 and 1360, was the emergence of a greatly expanded sense of what balance is and can be. In this groundbreaking history of balance, Joel Kaye reveals that this new sense of balance and its potentialities became the basis of a new model of equilibrium, shaped and shared by the most acute and innovative thinkers of the period. Through a focus on four disciplines - scholastic economic thought, political thought, medical thought, and natural philosophy - Kaye's book reveals that this new model of equilibrium opened up striking new vistas of imaginative and speculative possibility, making possible a profound re-thinking of the world and its workings. Review: 'Simply stated, my enthusiasm for A History of Balance, 1250-1375 is boundless. Words such as 'transformative' and 'pathbreaking' do not adequately convey [Kaye's] accomplishment ... [His] synthetic vision renders coherent vast bodies of medieval literatures that one might suspect are integral to one another, but that no one before him has demonstrated so thoroughly and powerfully. I feel confident in saying that in decades hence, scholars will still be citing and drawing upon the insights offered by [this book]. I guarantee that [it] will profoundly inform my own future research on the intellectual history of the Middle Ages.' Cary J. Nederman, Renaissance Quarterly 'Through his analysis of the shifting sense of balance, Kaye opens up a fresh view on the history of ideas in the high and later Middle Ages, as well as a lens, he hopes, through which others might productively begin to examine the thought of other times and places. At every stage, the reader experiences a feeling of intellectual wonder not unlike that of a child holding up a kaleidoscope, as the 'pieces' of medieval thought fall into a new and beautiful array. A History of Balance, 1250-1375 is one of the most deeply satisfying works of intellectual history I have read in a long time.' Laura A. Smoller, The American Historical Review 'It is the spirit of the works of M. Bloch and Jacques Le Goff that is found here ... this magnificent work will live on as an indispensable reference. The model [of balance] now takes its place as a splendid object of historical investigation.' Alain Boureau, translated from Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales '... this is an exciting, deep, and detailed history of a medieval approach to understanding nature and society that achieved much before slowing down and fading in the 1370s ... Kaye's book convincingly shows that medieval models for understanding equilibrium and motion were present in medicine (traced back to Galen) before physics - and perhaps in ethics and economics even before that ... This book traces the history of a large part of scholastic philosophy from 1250 to 1375 - if this is a history of balance, it is a lot more besides.' Edith Dudley Sylla, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 'Kaye's synthesis in A History of Balance, 1250-1375 is a powerful and persuasive new framework in which to understand the development of medieval intellectual life.' James Byrne, Early Science and Medicine 'In his intriguing and learned A History of Balance, 1250-1375, Joel Kaye lays out a bold and original account of intellectual transformation in the late Middle Ages. In impressive detail, he chronicles the formation of a model of equilibrium, or balance, in the minds and writings of late medieval thinkers. This model ... gave rise to strikingly novel ideas about the self-regulating actions of the human body, commerce, and politics. His study breaks new ground in its account of the subtle interplay of experience and thought in the work of these authors - they show the influence not only of ancient texts (especially Galen and Aristotle), but also of their own eve