People like James Hannam

God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science is a book written by British historian of science James Hannam and published in 2009 (UK: Icon Books).

The book challenges the view that "there was no science worth mentioning in the Middle Ages … [and] that the Church held back what meagre advances were made".  Hannam rebuts a number of modern myths about Medieval Christianity such as the idea that the Inquisition burned people for their science or that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat. He lists 13th century inventions such as spectacles and the mechanical clock to argue that "medieval scholars overturned the false wisdom of ancient Greece to lay the foundations of modern science."