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Meditation, Invention, and Designing Thought in the Augustinian Middle Ages

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A fresh perspective on how early scholars perceived the cosmos and the nature of knowledge through a tour-de-force study of the central role geometry played in medieval creativity.Geometry, rhetori...
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  • 07 October 2025
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A fresh perspective on how early scholars perceived the cosmos and the nature of knowledge through a tour-de-force study of the central role geometry played in medieval creativity.


Geometry, rhetoric and creativity were intricately linked in medieval thought. Early thinkers integrated mathematical and linguistic frameworks in their attempts to understand both divine and human creation with geometry providing the means through which these scholars tackled everything from theological speculation to the medieval art of "Invention".

Through detailed explorations of the works of figures such as Augustine, Calcidius and Cassiodorus, this book reveals how medieval thinkers conceptualized beginnings-not as fixed points but as unfolding processes with metaphors of weaving, mapping and journeying reflecting how these scholars navigated the act of creation, whether that terrestrial or cosmological.

Engaging with philosophy, theology and intellectual history, this work offers fresh insights into how medieval minds reconciled the limits of human understanding with the vast complexity of the universe. In doing so, it challenges modern assumptions about the separation of mathematical and linguistic thinking, demonstrating the dynamic, process-oriented nature of medieval ideas about the mind and the procedures of thinking.
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Price: $120.00
Pages: 240
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Durham University IMEMS Press
Series: Science in Culture, c.350 – c.1750
Publication Date: 07 October 2025
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781914967221
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: SCIENCE / History, European history: medieval period, middle ages, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Rhetoric, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval, RELIGION / Philosophy, History of science, Philosophy of science, Literature: history and criticism, Philosophy of language, Medieval Western philosophy
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Introduction: Creative Geometries

1. Syntax and Geometry
2. Investigation and Invention
3. homo sapiens as homo mensurans
4. The Instruments of Thinking

Coda
Bibliography
Index