Medieval Irish Science

Seventh-century Ireland was well-known as an island of saints and scholars. But what of science? In fact, Ireland in the Early Middle Ages led the way in terms of serious scientific engagement with the physical universe and the attempt to understand the nature of the created world. The famous studies of Archbishop James Ussher in the seventeenth century have their antecedents in the efforts of Irish scholars, 1000 years before him, to offer rational explanations of the natural phenomena that they observed around them in their everyday world. More than anywhere else in Europe at that time, the Irish in the seventh century succeeded in figuring out ‘how things worked’ in the universe. They did so not only in the field of technical chronology (in which they were THE masters), but also in those areas of study that the modern world calls Science. 

Saints, scholars and science in early medieval Ireland – Prof. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, NUI Galway http://musicandthestars.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/conference-abstracts-2/