Anthony Grayling’s The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind has two main goals, the first, an “official” interpretive objective that is explicitly articulated from the beginning, and the second, an ideological aim that is central to Grayling’s agenda but which nonetheless remains implicit through most of the book. Discussing some of the key events and figures in seventeenth-century political and intellectual history, The Age of Genius makes for an interesting and, at points, even entertaining read, but it fails to accomplish its two argumentative goals.

Grayling’s explicit goal, presented right at the outset of the book, is to make the case for two related claims. The first claim is that the seventeenth century was “the epoch” in the history of humankind. By this, the author means that the seventeenth century was the pivotal moment in history, a turning point for our species: “the seventeenth century is truly the moment that history changed course, so profoundly that everything before it is another world, and that it and the times since are our world” (p. 6). As Grayling emphasizes, those were times of radical advances in multiple domains of human life. In politics, religion, technology, education, language and art, the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth could not be more different from one another—and it was all due to the rise, in the seventeenth century, of modern science and the “birth of the modern mind.” But this period of unprecedented creativity and innovation was also a time of widespread political instability. Grayling recounts in great detail many of the transitions in government and the wars involving the English, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Germans, fueled by religious convictions as much as by expansionist ambitions. This, in turn, reveals the second main claim the book puts forward: if the seventeenth century was, as Grayling affirms, such a defining moment for the origin of the modern world, the second, related claim is that this was not despite all the political turmoil that characterized the period, but rather because of it. Grayling asks: “Does the tumult of the century in some way explain its genius and those changes, or cause them, or might there have been even greater innovation if it had been a time of peace?” (p. 11). He sticks with the former, affirming that upheaval and turmoil were not just contingently associated with the emergence of science—rather, instability and war were, for Grayling, responsible for the rise of “our” modern scientific worldview.

The Age of Genius fails to provide support for these two related claims, and thus falls short from accomplishing its explicit interpretive goal. A first reason for this is that at no point are we given a compelling account of causal connection that supports the claims outlined above and precludes their alternative. The first third of the book is dedicated to military history, and reports the events leading to and resulting from the Thirty Years’ War. This detailed narrative of the long and violent clash between the main European seats of power is followed by an account of the intellectual context, in the second third of the book, and of the cultural and sociopolitical context, in the last portion of the book. Grayling makes a persuasive point about the role of religion in early modern political struggle: while religious disagreement was a major cause of military conflict in the early 1600s, toward the end of that century religion would no longer be as widely considered a legitimate reason for bloodshed. Still, even if he is right about how this fundamental shift is characteristic of the modern mindset and its legacy, Grayling provides no compelling account that establishes a causal connection between political upheaval and the rise of the modern scientific mind. Arguably, the relationship between the two—that is, between political turmoil and the rise of science in the seventeenth century—is one of common ancestry, both hailing from the conceptual and practical innovations in the preceding century, namely the period we have come to call the ‘Renaissance’. If any moment in history deserves the label “the epoch in the story of the human mind” (p. 4)—and it is not obvious that any one moment does—Grayling gives us no ultimate reason to believe that the seventeenth century is it, rather than, say, the “long sixteenth century” encompassing the European discovery of the Americas, the invention of the printing press, the protestant reformation and related developments that shape our modern politico-economic heritage.

A second serious problem with Grayling’s account of the seventeenth century is the superficial examination that The Age of Reason gives to the link between science, religion, and magic. In the second third of the book, which focuses on the intellectual context and developments in the period, Grayling speaks of there being a “three-cornered relationship” between occultism, science and religion that was “sometimes a fight, and sometimes not, between each of the three and the other two” (p. 204). But even while apparently attempting to leave room for nuance, Grayling draws sharp distinctions between all three, ignoring their intertwined nature at the time, which thereby results in caricatures of each of the three. Consider, for example, the contrast Grayling draws between “the short-cuts of occultism” and “the empirical and quantitative methods of genuine science” (p. 186) based on the publicity of knowledge. As he affirms, occultism was intrinsically solitary and secretive (and, in that sense, “occult”), whereas science was fundamentally different because it was collaborative and public. But focusing on secrecy as the defining characteristic of occultism belies the more important feature that brings it to a close connection with Aristotelianism and which places both in stark opposition with the emerging scientific outlook. Rather than just relating to secrecy, the label ‘occultism’ is importantly associated with the magicians’ pursuit of the “occult” or “hidden” powers and properties of objects and entities. This emphasis on what was beyond direct observation is conceptually akin to the Aristotelian scholastic focus on explanations based on the ‘four causes’, most of which are unobservable and in that sense also “occult.” A more illuminating contrast would therefore have been between, on the one hand, occultist and Aristotelian traditions of thought, and, on the other hand, the emerging mechanical natural philosophy which limited inquiry to observable and measurable physical properties and change. Grayling’s inadequate account of the tripartite relationship between religion, science and magic is further compromised by the naïve view of science it incorporates. In addition to saying that the modern mind is “based on commitment to observation and reason” (p. 239), Grayling further affirms: “[science] does not have a conclusion in advance, for which it seeks support; that is the way of the dogmatist” (p. 241). And yet, just a few pages later (p. 249), Grayling goes on to describe how Galileo endeavored to find empirical support for the Copernican framework, a theoretical outlook Grayling claims Galileo had accepted as more than mere heuristic for decades even before having any experimental proof. This goes directly against the overly-simplistic picture of science articulated by Grayling as theory-free and not “seeking support for a prior conclusion,” a caricature that would also render ‘unscientific’ most of contemporary, hypothesis-driven (rather than purely exploratory) science.

Along with the explicit goal of articulating a particular interpretation of the events in the seventeenth century leading to the “birth of the modern mind,” The Age of Reason also has, as indicated earlier, a second, hidden goal. This goal is to support the view that science and religion are ultimately and unavoidably at odds, such that the existence and persistence of one constitutes a threat for the other. This perspective is implied by a few side remarks throughout the book, but it is only presented explicitly in the very last chapter. Given Grayling’s frequent association in popular press as the “fifth horseman of New Atheism,” there should be no surprise about the book’s hidden agenda and which side of the science-religion divide the author takes. And yet, it is worth pointing out that no argument is given in The Age of Genius that supports Grayling’s ideology. In the concluding chapter, the author openly forgoes historiographic impartiality when he explicitly qualifies his own perspective as “Whiggish, progressivist, secularist” (p. 321) and “Whiggish, meliorist, progressivist” (note 1, p. 336). Grayling accordingly gives mythical status to modern science, framing the events in and since the seventeenth century in terms of a grand narrative in which heroes (i.e., rational, scientifically-minded critical thinkers) try to resist villains (i.e., irrational, dogmatic, and fundamentalist champions of religion). This story, Grayling is careful to point out, is now at a decisive juncture in which science is under serious threat by religious intolerance everywhere around the globe. But, he makes sure to add, the story is not over yet, and the reader is summoned to take sides with either the good or the bad guys. Grayling does not seem to notice the irony in the overall picture his book provides: the conclusion that science is seriously threatened by religion seems to contradict the book’s official thesis that science was born not despite, but because of the religion-fueled turmoil and upheaval of the seventeenth century. In other words, if he is right that the early modern period gives evidence that science thrives in times of instability motivated by religious intolerance rather than in times of peace, then we need an actual argument for why current religious intolerance rather than peace is a threat to science. Grayling’s questionable perspective, explicitly put forward in the last chapter but implicitly suggested a few times throughout, raises serious doubts about the book’s real historiographic contribution. It should be read as a polemic piece: a well-written and entertaining narrative that is nonetheless impregnated with the same dogmatic attitude that Grayling associates with the religious outlook he vilifies.

* The edition reviewed was an Advance Reading Copy. Page numbers may not correspond to the ones found in the final printed edition.

© 2016 Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira

Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira (http://sites.google.com/site/gsoliveirabr/).