will be very creative. We see this by comparison to medieval Christendom
(Figures 9.3 through 9.5). This was not a very notable period for scientific
innovation, but there is a remarkable overlap between scientific interests and
the main philosophical networks. In the 1200s Grosseteste and his lineage
(Adam Marsh, Roger Bacon) made science the center of their philosophies; so
did Bacon’s great contemporary and rival Albertus Magnus. Aquinas, though
only marginally dabbling in science, was close to the network of scientific
translators and researchers. Bonaventure’s student John Peckham (who was
Bacon’s student too) is best known as the antagonist of Siger and the Averroists,
but he was also a scientist in his own right, contributing to optics and cosmol-
ogy. Medieval Christian philosophy has as much network connection with
science as we see anywhere in the Western tradition—indeed more, if we count
the at least minimal interest that a large majority of the most important
philosophers showed in science.^19
But there were no scientific stars in medieval Christendom.^20 In what way,
then, can a connection with the core philosophers promote science in such a
period? A clue is given by an abortive episode. The mid-1300s generation of
philosophers at Balliol and Merton represent the high point of creative devel-
opments in medieval mathematics, kinematics, and mechanics; at the same
time, the Paris circle around Buridan and his pupils overthrew Aristotelean
impetus theory, proposed coordinate geometry, and considered the movement
of the earth. These were not detached networks of scientists or textual trans-
lators; both the Oxford and Paris groups were offshoots of the main networks,
engaged in theological disputes (Bradwardine, Wyclif), and in avant-garde
questions of metaphysics and epistemology (Autrecourt, Mirecourt, Buridan;
see Figure 9.6). The dynamics of the philosophical network, the nominalist
movement, and the shift toward the arts curriculum turned attention toward
topics of science; the combative energy and the drive toward abstraction in
philosophy for a brief period now spilled over into scientific innovation. What
lives by the philosophical network dies by the network. As the entire intellec-
tual arena of the late 1300s went into crisis, technical developments in phi-
losophy and in science alike became buried in factionalism and loss of focus
in the attention space. The accomplishments of Swineshead, Buridan, and
Oresme and their circles were lost from view as the attention space lost focus
in the chaos of decentralization, whose sources were examined in Chapter 9.
A similar analysis may be performed for the late Muslim scientific stars,
including al-Tusi (mid-1200s), whose astronomy was mathematically equiva-
lent to that of Copernicus. Nevertheless, the Islamic network surrounding
al-Tusi is marked by neither rapid discovery nor consensus (Huff, 1993). Here
too the scientists are in the mainstream of the philosophical network; al-Tusi
and al-Shirazi are notable for synthesizing Ibn Sina’s Neoplatonism with the
548 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Western Paths