The Distortions of Google
Suppose you have heard of my book The Closing of the Western Mind, a study of what happened to Greek philosophy at the end of the Roman empire. (Some of it was absorbed into Christianity, some was not). You want to hear more about it. Perhaps you start with Amazon and when you access the US and UK sites you are pleased to find that there are 86 reviews to read. This will surely give you some idea of how the book has been received. Fifty of these 86 are five star and another 22 four star to make 72 four and five star. In contrast there are only six one or two star reviews. Not everyone agrees with the book but, inevitably with a title the way it is, it has caused a great deal of debate. I have been invigorated by the many discussions on the book with all sorts I have had in the nine years since it came out. The North American sales to March 2011 were just under 69, 000 and I would like to write a second edition one day to strengthen my arguments with the fruits of recent research.
Now try Googling ‘Freeman Closing of the Western Mind’ and the first to come up will be a review by one James Hannam, a UK ‘historian of science’. Hannam makes no secret of the fact that he is Christian apologist. (Google ‘James Hannam Why the Catholic Church Must Fight Back’). He wrote a book on the Middle Ages which came out in the UK as God’s Philosophers. Many were taken in by it and it was even shortlisted by the Royal Society for its Book of the Year Award. ( Amazed at this, I wrote a critique on the New Humanist blog.) In the United States God’s Philosophers has found its true niche under the title The Genesis of Science, How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. It is published by the conservative publisher Regnery and listed on Amazon alongside ‘also buys’ such as Rodney Stark’s The Case for the Crusades and a work arguing that Adam and Eve actually did exist. No one would now take it, or Hannam, seriously as an objective history/historian of science.
James Hannam has no background in the ancient world, his PhD is on sixteenth century Oxford and Cambridge (although, in the discussion we had on my New Humanist critique he admitted that had renounced his thesis – sixteenth century humanism was no longer a positive force, as argued in his PHD, but a reactionary one) and his review of Closing is highly misleading. Yet it has remained the top listing for some years. I am a bit of an innocent on these things but when I asked around I was told that one can actually manipulate rankings in one’s favour. But surely one person can not manipulate so blatantly in his own cause? Apparently they can. I was alerted to none other than one James Hannam on the subject. If you go to his blog under the present name Quodlibeta (quick before he gets there before you), find the archive on the right hand side, access a posting for October 3rd, 2006, ‘How to Get Published’, click on the link ‘here’ after ‘book proposal’ you find the book proposal he made to his publisher for Genesis of Science, the title of his book as it has actually appeared in the US. At the end of the proposal one finds:
‘I intend to use my website as a promotional tool for the book. Its penetration into Christian cyberspace is considerable and will do much to sell the book to that market. The website has many American readers who are very positive about the concept of the book. They should help promote it and will write reviews for Amazon.com and their websites. However, I will also construct another website that addresses a mainstream audience specifically to promote The Genesis of Science. As well as the usual links to reviews and endorsements, it will contain several of my articles on history of science, details of my academic achievements and a more detailed bibliography than provided in the book. I will use my contacts on the web to ensure a high Google rating for the new website (this is determined by how many other sites link to a page and so having plenty of friends with websites is invaluable).’
Hannam is clearly an expert at these things and this explains the high rating of his review of Closing. Now he is at it again. If you Google my new book Holy Bones, Holy Dust, How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe, the second entry is from his blog Quodlibeta. If you open it you find that it is no more than a discussion about my book by Hannam and his supporters even though none of them have read it. This does not stop them, of course, being disparaging about it. I was hoping that the Quodlibeta discussion would make the top spot to make my case here even more compelling but, in this case, Google appear to have been more successful. Although I have done nothing to arrange this, my own article on my own book from the New Humanist takes the top spot. The Quodlibeta entry seems forever doomed to be at number two. Hannam is clearly losing his touch! Still with every review of Holy Bones that I get from professional historians, the more ridiculous the Quodlibeta discussion becomes. I hope it stays at or near the top to show how distorted the Google system can become as a means of finding helpful and objective knowledge.
Who knows what other distortions go on?
About the Author
Charles Freeman is the author of The Closing of the Western Mind.
I googled ‘Freeman Closing of the Western Mind’ (both with and w/o quotation marks), and your book on Amazon came up first. Whathisface’s review was second.
Then I googled ‘holy bones holy dust how relics shaped the history of medieval europe’ (both with and w/o quotation marks), and your Amazon book was first. The Quodlibeta blog was nowhere to be seen (at least on the first three pages). I actually had to type in ‘Hannam’ after your title to see his blog listing (and it was the fifth hit).
I guess the wheels of google continue to grind as I write this.
I’m just wondering about your thesis, I’m still only an undergrad classicist, mainly Orphism into the Sophists and onto Socrates (so I really do want to be informed on this and not argue), but all I’ve seen is that the major tenets of (neo)-Platonism became the dominant theology of early Christianity. Especially the idea of the transcendent perfect, direct from the forms of Plato. I’ve got your book on order now, I’m just wondering how mainstream Christianity can claim to be anything other than 4th/3rd C. BCE Greek post-Socratean Philosophy with just a titular figurehead direct from messianic Hebrew mythology.I have a lot of time for the Sophists, pretty much because all we have in the historical record is the hatchet job done by the Athenian aristocratic party.
It’s not a distortion as such, it’s just how Google works and they’re open about it. Your page’s position in search results depends on your Page Rank which is determined partly by the content of the page but also largely by the number of other sites linking to you. The quality of these sites is also important – a link from a Page Rank 10 site is worth vastly more than one from a page Rank 1 site. The way Google explains it is that these links are an indicator of your site’s authority on a subject.
Yes you can game the system – I worked in internet marketing and SEO for almost a decade before I became too disgusted with it to face going to work. However it can be a lot of effort if your site isn’t well known and it’s much easier to achieve results for very specific search terms. If there are positive reviews of your book on already well-known sites it would be relatively easy for you to gather some links toward them and boost rankings.
Paul, Thanks for this. I am not a game player and Closing has sold quite enough by word of mouth ( still the most authentic way,I think) for me to be happy with the sales as they are. From what you say, I could boost positive reviews of my book and,as seems to happen here, others would be able to boost negative reviews. If you look at Quodlibeta ,you will see that as a site it hardly functions, very low comments intake. I assume that it gets its ranking through being linked to a lot of US Christian sites but I don’t know this.
The odd thing is that Closing came out nine years ago,I haven’t reread it myself for years,I have had six books published since then, but these games go on!
Charles Sullivan ,Thanks for this. I tried another computer for Charles Freeman Holy Bones and Quodlibeta on ‘relics’ came up fifth, but then the Boomerang Bookshop in Australia came up third! I am just interested to see how these things work as, for me, the Google review list seems to have very little impact on actual sales.
Akheloios -your idea is interesting, yes do read Closing and see what you think. However, it is dated now, there has been a lot of new work done since I wrote it and you may find my A New History of Early Christianity (Yale) a better bet. Good reading.
Charles S. Yes you are right- if you put in my name and the full title of Holy Bones you don’t get Quodlibeta coming up – on the two unlinked computers I have tried you do if you just put in ‘Freeman Holy Bones’ – the search term i have found most useful. However, the real point is how does Quodlibeta get such a high ranking. If you look now you will find the three contributors, James Hannam and two mates, have posted four postings over the past month – and it is no better if you look back. These have attracted a total of eight comments.I can only assume that it achieves its high ranking by being listed on other sites, presumably Christian ones. Anyone have any further ideas on this?
The wider issue is that there is no way that Google can sort out the high-ranking pages that are authoritative in academic terms from those that are not. In the end, folks, we just have to get back to that old-fashioned way of reading and thinking for ourselves.
All might not be as it seems. Ironically, the fact that you have clicked on the Quodlibeta link on probably more that one occasion will have influenced your own google results as the search engine will weigh your search and click history when presenting its results. In other words, what holds for you will not necessarily hold for the rest of us. Here is a short link on the subject: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html
Searching for your book for example, I have not encountered the Quodlibeta link in the first three pages (which makes it practically invisible to the rest of the world). Mind you, I am searching from Canada. Location also affect search results.
Thanks, Frank. Yes, it may be because it is a British site -there is nothing about my being customised on my Google -it came up on another UK Google search on a computer that had never heard of the blog. Still that is not the real point of my article. i wanted to show, with an example, that it appears that individuals outside Google can manipulate rankings. In many cases, this is done by website makers. I know of two people who are advertising their wares and have been asked if they want their website to be fixed to come up higher on Google. My point is that this can be used the other way round.These two cases have done me no damage whatsoever and this must be true in most cases where these games go on, but potentially it is dangerous and it is hard to see how Google can do anything about it. Charles.
I recommend not to solely use google. Ixquick: http://ixquick.com is a good one. And it doesn’t save your IP adress as google does to target you with tailored adds.
Food and alt-med woo have been causing similar problems, as seen here:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-scam-scam/
I had the Google problem recently when I was trying to find a scientific overview of the HCG diet. Most of the sites that came up were actually selling HCG, and unhelpfully producing sales pitches written as if they were somewhat skeptical reviews. For a lot of these things, it’s necessary to go to a source of information that you already know about and trust a bit more (or at least one that is focused on relevant links).
Of course, manipulating Amazon (and eBay, and Wikipedia) by flooding it with sympathetic voices is nothing new. Personally, I only bother with the reviews if I’m actually reading the explanations, and even then I feel like I have to read between the lines. You always get reviews that actually mean “The delivery company dropped the ball.” or “I realized after a while that I don’t actually want to reading anything on this topic.” or “I was determined from the start to hate this book, so I did.” Of course, individual readers can make these decisions, but any programs or services that are looking for the highest rated X will not look for anything regarding reviews of X except the star ratings. So unfortunately, swamping ratings in this way will succeed in pushing books down the rankings.
(Another problem with star ratings: http://xkcd.com/937/)
This seems like a rather uninformed post in regards to how internet hits work. Google rankings reflect the number of clicks on a site – nothing more, nothing less. Pages can be written in such a way as to generate more hits, but this is almost impossible to do with full text articles without compromizing the content (after google got wize to certain pages writing “sex” thousands of times in the background of their pages, in the same color as the background – impossible to spot for the casual reader but getting hits every time a search for “sex” was done). It is easier if you have pictures in the review, as on the “Bede’s Library” site, but inspecting the few pictures there, you will note that there is no “alternate text” or “long descriptions” in them – clear indications that the page has not been search-optimized for google at all.
Second, trying to rally people to increase your google ranking is not a viable option unless you have a network reaching tens of thousands or even more people that will commit to repeated searches for your material – Google base their ratings on worldwide search patterns, and such efforts will just be a blip on the radar. The rankings are based on clicks, which of course is about as good an indication of quality as amazon reviews, being put in the hands of the general population, who (if the number of amazon reviews are an indiciation) find “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”(hardly a quality benchmark) far more interesting than anything either you or Hannam have written!
I am rather puzzled about why you regard Hannam’s book as a bad candidate for the Royal Society prize. The book is not controvercial, nor does it add all that much new information to its subject; it is simply a popularization of the current (as of the last 20 years or so) state of medieval intellectual history with a focus from the 12th century onward. It is, however, a well-written, well-researched and concize popularization of the subject. As the stated intention of the RS price is precicely popular science, the only surprise might be that the book, as a history of science book, was nominated to the prize. For this reason, it was unlikely to win the prize.
This brings me to an amusing parallell. If you search for “god’s philosophers” + “royal society”, the first hit after the RS’ own to come up is your own tirade on why it should not have been nominated! Have you doing some “blatant manipulation” of the google rankings in your spare time?
Thanks, Ippy and Sean. Yes, I think we are all getting pretty savvy about this. Although, so far as I can see, Hannam’s negative and misleading review of my Closing has been at or near the top of Google for about five years, I have only seen it quoted in one blog discussion and then another contributor challenged it. (It does seem to be known in the conservative Christian sites, however.) Still it is fascinating to see the way manipulation can be done and I long to know more from the experts on these things ( or those like Paul who resigned in disgust!)
The important point to make, of course, is that the system can be manipulated to spread negative material on a product. We are all warned.
It seems that the Quodlibeta discussion on my Holy Bones mostly comes up on the UK Google. I have no problems in it staying near the top because it provides an exemplar of how a totally meaningless and unhelpful discussion from an obscure website can, somehow, outclass a lot of more reputable sources. It certainly cannot do me any harm and it is mysterious as to how it ever got there when it does not even show Quodlibeta in a good light. Perhaps someone is manipulating Google to show up the inadequacies of Quodlibeta (not me, I promise!).
Independent critical thinking is the only way. (I was a Senior Examiner with the International Baccalaureate’s Theory of Knowledge course so critical thinking skills were my professional concern for many years.)
Endre- well I was only going on on what James Hannam had written about manipulating Google. I knew nothing about such things until I read that. I am very happy to be put right.
Tirade against God’s Philosophers. Well, readers who are interested can read my critique for themselves.I only wrote it after it appeared that this book might be taken seriously after the shortlisting for the Royal Society’s prize. We all know, courtesy of James Hannam, that five star Amazon reviews can be rustled up as well!
He is just pushing for publicity, which is quite reasonable for someone who has just published a book. I expect that you try to publicise your books as widely as possible as well? As i wrote, what can be construed as “manipulation” is not really evident on his site. It is not optimized for google hits in the way a site can be. This likely means that most people who make their way to it do it through regular searches.
I think Hannam’s book is being taken seriously…why should it not? As far as I know, it has been well-received within the scholary community interested in premodern natural philosophy as the RS shortlist indicates – and writing popular science that both academics and laymen can appreciate is no mean feat. You don’t get on such a shortlist without producing a solid work.
Eugen- well, it is what you count as acceptable publicity. Speaking as an author, I do not find it acceptable to ask people to post five star reviews for me on Amazon. (In the 150 reviews I have on Amazon, two are by people I know and both are four stars!) It discredits the whole purpose as people expect reviews to be objective.(The UK Society of Authors mag, said that as a result of friends’ posting reviews, no one takes Amazon reviews seriously any more which is a pity for those of us who just wait to see what turns up.) i am sorry that you appear to endorse the practice.
Hannam’s book is not taken as seriously as you think- or would think from the online reviews. When i wrote my critique, before posting it, I passed it over to one or two academics who had seen the book. One said she was appalled by its listing, another, a professor in the history of science, say he had binned it after reading a few pages. No academic has yet challenged my review. However, this is not the point of this discussion. The reaction to Hannam’s book in the States shows that there, at least, they recognise where it belongs -in the further reaches of the Christian right..
My apologies, Endre not Eugen.
No problem.
Does he ask anyone to post five star reviews? As far as I can see, he asks for publicity and states he hopes for many people to review it positively, something most authors can agree with, I suspect. I have to admit I find it far more dodgy – not that the first review of your book that pops up on amazon is actually written by yourself (and actively promoted with 500 or so “likes”). I even commented on it, back in 2009. In fact, it is one of the (many) reasons I have more or less dismissed amazon’s review system and tend to ignore it (not an attack on amazon – I love their popularization of the ebook). No author should write reviews on his own book, even if said review is some sort of attempt to defend the book from other reviews.
Who were these two academics? They certainly did not write any reviews of Hannam’s book I can remember reading.
Something odd happened to my post. Line 2 of the second block should read: I have to admit I find it far more dodgy that the first review of your book that pops up on amazon is actually written by yourself (and actively promoted with 500 or so “likes”).
Endre.
‘The website has many American readers who are very positive about the concept of the book. They should help promote it and will write reviews for Amazon.com and their websites.’ James Hannam on The Genesis of Science.
I will leave that to open interpretation.
Yes, on my Closing on Amazon.com, I took the opportunity, that presumably any author can take, to comment on some of the other reviews. As an author, I think this this should be a standard part of the Amazon process- there should be a designated area for authors to respond to reviews especially when their work has been misrepresented. I made sure that this ‘review’ was under my own name. I have not solicited a single response and so I am only pleased that my initiative has received such widespread support, enough to propel it to the top spot for the best of reasons. All the more evidence that Amazon should make authors’ responses standard , not discourage them. It would help deter some of the sillier reviewers if they knew they would be shown up by the author.
P.S. Academic reviewers do not tend to review books that they think rubbish. There are too many of them and life is too short. The short-listing of the God’s Philosophers seems to have taken quite a lot of people by surprise. I don’t know whether anyone approached the judges behind the scenes to voice their concerns. I only published my critique after the result- Nick Lane’s excellent Life Ascending – was announced.
UK research results.It is clear that, as Frank has suggested, Google results depend on location. I have now the results from six independent UK computers putting in ‘Freeman Holy Bones’, only one of which has ever had any contact with the Quodlibeta site. There is one second, three thirds, one fourth and one fifth. So it has got up there somehow! Long may its high ranking continue for the reasons I have specified earlier!
Academic reviewers tend to review books on subjects they know something about, if the books are controvercial. Hannam’s is not, it is largerly a (very good) popularization of older work – much of it standard works like those of Lindberg and Grant, but made into more accessible popular science.
Again, who are these two academics? Unless you actually name them and we can look up their articles or books and, presumeably, publicized work running counter to the fairly standard view put forward in GS, using them as sources of authority is about as useful as claiming space aliens are critical to Hannam’s book.
There is a section where you can respond to amazon reviews. It is called “Comments”, appear under each review, and can also be written under your own name. I do not see the logic behind your idea that you should be able to write reviews on your own book when an option to comment on reviews is already available.
Endre. This discussion is not about Hannam’s God’s Philosophers/Genesis of Science. It is about whether Google rankings can be manipulated- a subject on which I am seeking guidance from others.
You can access my own critique of God’s Philosophers – ‘Charles Freeman God’s Philosophers’ if you are interested. The two academics I approached to read through my critique both knew of the book and I asked for their private responses to my critique. One was a philosopher, one a historian of science, both at British universities. As I approached them privately, I cannot be expected to release their names.I wanted to make sure that I was not saying anything in my critique that experts in these fields would not agree with- a fairly standard procedure and a sensible one. I received one important correction.
Hannam’s work is not a popularisation of Grant and Lindberg. Compare what Lindberg says in his very positive appreciation of Greek science in the five chapters of his The Beginnings of Western Science with Hannam’s dismissal or ignorance of it. Hannam could not have placed ‘The Genesis of Science’ in the Middle Ages if he had read his Lindberg! Lindberg and Grant are great fans of Aristotle, Hannam continually dismisses him. I have blogged at greater length on this elsewhere -where I have forgotten!-but it is not relevant to the discussion here.
You must have read a very different book than the one I read from Hannam if you think he dismisses the Aristotelean tradition or greek natural philosophy! Considering that Grant himself is one of the historians of science that have reviewed the book positively, I must implore you to ask your mystery academics to actually criticize the book or let you reveal who they are. If not, your insistense carries only the weight of your own words.
But fair enough, this thread is about Google rankings and how they can be manipulated and your answer to that is yes, in the old-fashioned way, by getting lots of hits, because it does not seem as if the professional’s tricks have been used in this case.
This is a very odd discussion to be having on the internet.
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
and join the 21st century.
Hmm, last post into moderation because of URL? OK – read the Wikipedia page on ‘search engine optimization’. It’s normal marketing these days, it just is…
Endre. I spent far too long on Hannam’s book and my critique of it is up there for all to see with footnotes to my sources. You can read it and make your own comments on it if you want there. The question remains why in the US mainstream historians of science have failed to recognise Hannam’s genius and, according to Amazon, his The Genesis of Science has attracted such strange bed-fellows. End of story on this one.
Dave- thanks- this is just what I was hoping to be told about. I followed one link and came to David Segal’s article in the New York Times of February 12, 2011. The Dirty Little Secrets of Search – and, yes, it does come up on Google. This seems closest to what Hannam was referring to : I will use my contacts on the web to ensure a high Google rating for the new website (this is determined by how many other sites link to a page and so having plenty of friends with websites is invaluable).’
I think this solves the problem so far as I am concerned. I can’t be bothered to take it up with Google as there is no evidence that the high Google ranking of Hannam’s review of my Closing of the Western Mind has done me any harm, and the Quodlibeta discussion of Holy Bones certainly will not, but it provides an excellent example of how these things work. I am just amazed that Hannam went public with this on his blog- then known as Bede’s Journal.
Of course, Google may read this discussion and downgrade him as they did with Penney in the article I cited!
Why would they downgrade him? He clearly uses what the wiki article calls “White Hat” optimization techniques, otherwise known as publizising and marketing – nothing ad companies, pressure groups and others who want to set the trends do not do on a much greater scale daily.
Endre – It cannot be called ‘publicising and marketing’ to make sure a misguided review of a book you happen to dislike is kept consistently, I think it is five years now, at the top of the Google rankings for ‘Freeman Closing of the Western Mind’. Get real! Read the Segal article and see why Google downsize people -it looks as if he might qualify if I could be bothered to take this further. I wonder what his other websites are, however, and how often this targeting of individuals happens.
The response to Genesis of Science in the US (e.g. on Amazon) shows his ultimate agenda.
But hey, Closing is now nearly ten years old and I have had six books published since then. It hardly ranks high on my radar, sorry, Google ranking.
So far as I am concerned, I have, thanks, among others, to Dave, achieved what i came for and I thank Ophelia for hosting me here.
In the article above, you bold his promotion of his own book. He promotes his own book and his own site. On this site there is a bad review of your book. Are you quite seriously suggesting that he promotes his own site and book just to get high rankings for the bad review? That sounds like paranoia, to me.
No, his website promoting his book is quite separate from his blog so the two are not together. it seems, perhaps I need some more help here, that he has isolated the references to my book from his blog and has posted them separately. If i was only getting through to his blog, Quodlibeta, formerly Bede’s Journal, i would also pick up other references to these two books that he and his commentators have made within the blog.
I really think that I have dealt thoroughly with all your comments, Endre – the world out there is not as perfect as we would like it to be!
You have not really answered most of my questions by anything except by diverting them, but fair enough – they were not about this subject. But, Mr. Freeman, quite seriously – there is nothing wrong, unethical or unusual for someone to promote their own blog, book, web sites or article in the manner Hannam does. That he would do so spesifically to publicise a bad review or discussion on your book seems…exceptionally unlikely, not to mention counterproductive to promoting his own works!
Endre- it is good to end by something that we agree on -yes, you would have thought that it would be counter-productive to spend so much energy on promoting his negative review of Closing of the Western Mind. I too found it so strange that I have let it go for all these years as I could not believe that it could be deliberate. Of course, he might be trying to boost his own credibility with US Christian sites- still even then it seems an odd way of doing it. Thanks to the Segal article, we now know that it is possible to achieve a high ranking through linking to other websites and this is exactly what Hannam promised to do. It all fits together, So far as I am concerned the case is closed.
But Charles, all you have put together here is what looks to me as – if I may be excused – crazy conspiracy theory based on statements of Hannam’s on a subject that have nothing to do with his review of your book or any discussion of your other book!
Well,I am quite happy to go back to the beginning and ask how is it possible for a review from an obscure website in the UK to be kept at or near the top of the Google rankings for five years ( I think). And how is possible for a discussion on the same obscure website on a different book of mine be ranked third or fourth on the UK Google rankings. Hannam’s own statement surely deserves to count as evidence as to how it might have been done.
In the same way that your comment page on the Royal Society prize appears as #2 when people search for “God’s Philosophers” and “Royal Society” together (presumeably without you having nefariously crept about in the background making people click on it): lots of people click on it or link to it. I do not consider such things surprising at all when the search is about a single book in a field that is – let’s face it – of minimal interest to the vast majority of people. I have seen far weirder 2nd hits on google (and older search engines these last fifteen years) than this particular one.
‘ . . .t he search is about a single book in a field that is – let’s face it – of minimal interest to the vast majority of people’. Well, why don’t you go on to Google and type in ‘Charles Freeman Closing of the Western Mind’. The Bede’s Journal review is. today, second on a list that stretches for many pages and yet it is from a totally obscure website. Just please offer an alternative explanation of how it got there, other than through manipulation!
I think you misunderstand. The entire subject of the history of science is of minimal interest to the majority of people.
The explanation is simple, and requires no conspiracy:
People like the review and recommend it a lot, leading to many hits. You, when you write about the review (like we do now) make people who like your book go and read the review. Then they write about it, like you do, generating ever more hits.
To demonstrate: the Bede’s Library review has more hits than following reviews when doing the standard title search alongside your name – NY Times, Armarium Magnum (which also mentions Hannam’s review and links to it in the article), Google Books, (on my norwegian search engine, a norwegian book sales page- which IS the result of google “manipulation”, by the way – the site is heavily optimized), Random House, this page (not a review, but it actually mentions Hannam), and an interview with you.
So on the first page, we have two reviews that mention Hannam’s site and/or link to it. That an apparently much-discussed review page where there is actually a published email exchange between you and the reviewer trump hover at the top of the search page is no surprise to me. Why, this article also likely pushed the hits for the review upward!
This is the simple explanation, the Occam’s razor explanation. And it gets truer and truer the more we mention Hannam, Bede’s Library and reviews in conjunction with Closing of the Western Mind on this very thread. If you did not want to generate buzz around negative internet reviews of your book, the best thing to do would be to do what most authors do – ignore them.
I don’t think that would account for its high spot over several years. Hits like Armarium Magnum ( a mate of Hannam’s by the way) came much later. I think Hannam’s own evidence, allied to the Segal article, is good enough for me.You still have to explain how a totally inconsequential discussion on my Holy Bones also hits near the high spot. it’s the two together, different books, same obscure website, both getting near the top of Google searches that intrigued me. As i said earlier, if the Hannam review had been truly popular I would have come across references to it in the many discussions that there have been of Closing ( as you will see if you work down the Google list). Again,surely, if Hannam had been that popular, his website would have been a buzz of activity when, in fact, it is almost moribund.
Give me time,Dave, give me time. I am working on the Middle Ages at the moment and haven’t even reached the invention of printing.
Well, if you have convinced yourself that your rather egocentric conspiracy theory is true on the basis of correlation and an article that has almost no relevance to your case (unless Hannam can pay for optimization on the same level as an $18-billion dollar company), and plain common sense cannot dissuade you, I guess there is little more to discuss. I do hope those are not the standards of inquiry you set for your book research. Good health and good day!
Of course, if search engine optimisation isn’t enough, one can indeed get one’s friends and colleagues to write glowing reviews of one’s work… and, failing that, one can write them oneself (while simultaneously running down other people’s efforts).
If you get caught, however, all sorts of internet nasties have a habit of being revealed. Take, for example, the salutary case of historian Orlando Figes, who gave new meaning to sockpuppetry via Amazon book reviews. Although a very British story, this Canadian piece is the best (and most amusing) account of the whole caper:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/04/26/great-moments-in-sock-puppetry/
I gave the sad (yet hilarious) tale of Orlando Figes quite a lot of attention here.
Ophelia, it’s just occurred to me that I may have found that Macleans article on Figes via this site. Chuckles all around…
Now that this discussion has died down, I realize that as an academic who tends to work from a pile of books from a university library supplemented by visits around the Mediterranean to sites and museums that interest me, I have missed out on the real action: ‘ search engine optimization’. With luck there will be a backlash against this, especially when used on the fringes of the academic world. If independent critical thinking goes here, we really are in an age of darkness. The ‘rational’ Greeks may only have been a small elite, but they sure showed us how to think straight and we must uphold this against the assaults of the philistines.
Charles, the internet is the Philistines. If you can’t cope with that idea, you’re better off staying away from it, for the sake of your health, really.
Dave, Yes, it is good that I take such pleasure in following, however, inadequately, the old methods!
As Sidney Smith said
Nice one. Well, there is the old story about one of the sons of Evelyn Waugh, I forget which one, who was editor of the Literary Review. He would hand out books to his friends for review and tell them that they did not need to actually read them but if they did not they had to give them a good review.
I don’t expect anyone is reading this but I think I owe Hannam an apology. I don’t think he has ever claimed that his book is a popularisation of historians of science like Edward Grant, etc. It certainly isn’t. Hannam argues in his book that Galileo refound medieval science after it had been trashed by the humanists. Grant argues , p. 304, of his God and Reason in the Middle Ages, ” With the dissemination of Galileo’s writings, and the great fame he achieved, not only was medieval natural philosophy mortally wounded, but his ridicule and sarcasm also created a negative image of the Middle Ages that has remained remarkably persistent to the present’. So here they are at opposite poles. I think it is a misguided supporter of Hannam’s who has put about that he is merely popularising the work of others- no, in many ways Hannam is out there on a limb of his own- I certainly can’t find any other writer who supports him on his views on the humanists and Galileo as a champion of medieval science.
The idea that the renaissance humanists retarded natural science/philosophy has been around since at least George Sarton (a candidate to the first real historian of science) and Lynn Thorndyke as an opposition to Burckhardts view (based on their far better knowledge of medieval science than Burckhardt) and dates to before WW2. It is not something Hannam makes up, nor is it particulary revolutionary.
When it comes to Galileo using medieval natural philosophy in his work, an easily available example of this would be Lindberg, who in “The Beginnings of Western Science”, ties Galileo’s work on dynamics and kinematics to both the earlier work of the Merton calculators and the medieval impetus theories of Buridan and others. He has an healthy source list on the matter, with articles over 20 years old. If anything, Hannam is more enthusiastic about Galileo than Lindberg, who has strong reservations about the validity of Galileo’s Pisa experiments, for example. As I recall it, Hannam also sources to articles about Domingo de Sotos work on falling objects, published prior to Galileo’s experiments and possibly available to him, that also incorporate Buridan et.al. Both Lindberg and Hannam seem to be basing their treatment of the medieval influence on Galileos dynamics on an old debate that started in the fifites, and they both list sources.
So, there you have access the writers you have not found yet; look through the source listing in Hannam’s or Lindberg’s book.
Endre, You are right , these views originate in the forties and fifties but scholarship has moved on since then! Neither Grant nor Lindberg say much about humanism but recent research has effectively challenged ‘the humanists did not achieve much’ view which came in then. I would simply put you on to books such as Brian Ogilvie’s The Science of Describing, Chicago, 2006, which shows how humanist scholarship of the sixteenth century began intensive analysis of the ancient botany texts, found them wanting and then there began a competition to find and describe new species, so the birth of natural history. Similarly John Heilbron’s definitive biography of Galileo lists over two hundred individuals who influenced Galileo in an appendix and other than Dante I think Sacrobosco was the only medieval thinker and then only because Galileo taught him in an enlarged sixteenth century version. I can only rely on what scholars say but Heilbron seems pretty trustworthy and is more of a specialist in this particular area than Lindberg is. The point about Hannam is,of course, that he calls the humanists ‘incorrigible reactionaries’ – I don’t think even in the fifties anyone thought that- it is a view, of course, totally discredited today which is why, I repeat, Hannam is out on a limb. He cannot even provide a footnote to any historian who supports his strange view. His is the only example I know of the discontunity version of history – the medieval period was great,then we all went backwards, and then,pace Edward Grant above, Galileo revived medieval science. I would call it eccentric in fact! (Personally I am sympathetic to the CONTINUITY thesis- that there were elements of the Middle Ages that persisted through into the Renaissance – I am working on a book with this as one of the themes!)
My final piece of advice- don’t get hooked up on Hannam. Don’t listen to me. Go to a good university library, look up the latest volumes coming out on these issues, master them. It’s an exciting area at the moment with much rethinking going on.
Thorndyke definitely thought they were quite reactionary and overly focused on ancient texts as the source of knowledge, not to mention mysticists; the early versions of the continuity thesis were far stronger than the one(s) going today. It is a classical Hegelian synthesis situation: the old strong ideas of discontinuity met an equally strong continuity thesis which we are now seeing the result of. As is natural in academia, the debate is continuing.
I am not hung up on Hannam (considering you seem to think he is e-stalking you, that is a bit of the pot and the kettle there). I just find it irritating that you seem to have read his book “as the devil reads the bible”, as the old saying goes. The truth is that neither I, nor a great many others, find Hannam’s book particulary revolutionary, nor particulary revisionist. I mean, you seem to focus a lot on him calling them “incorrigible reactionairies”. Indeed he does – in a section spesifically talking about their reverence for classical Latin and the project to return the Latin language to its roots, or more specifically the Ciceronian version of it. That is hardly a bold claim, now is it? Hannam tends to strictly write about the renaissance humanists in the context of the original, language and text-centered meaning of the word. Is he a bit aggressive in the way he writes sometimes? Certainly…but now worse than what I have read in the popular science books of other, respectable, academics that operate on far thinner ground than he does.
I have read Ogilvie (in fact, I recently got the e-book version of his book, in an attempt to clear shelf space). I didn’t really find it to clash with Hannam’s book.
I cannot recall Heilbron’s list, but I would find it very odd if he thinks that Galileo’s dynamics were completely uninfluenced by the mean speed theorem. Are you sure he is not spesifically writing about heliocentrism vs Ptolematic geocentrism? Sacroboscos “Tractate on the Sphere” might be seen as mildly relevant there.
Lynn Thorndike, 1882-1965, retired from teaching 1950. R.I.P.
[…] is a story from the Vancouver Sun. Recalling Charles Freeman’s question and discussion regarding ranking in Google searches over at Butterflies and Wheels, it is interesting that a […]
Hello Mr Freeman, I have a question about one of your statements in the light of a fairly recent nomination of God’s Philosophers. Could you please explain why, if Dr Hannam is far out compared to regular scholarship, his book has been shortlisted by the British Society for the History of Science for the Dingle Prize? It is mentioned here:
http://www.bshs.org.uk/prizes/dingle-prize/
Kind regards.
No, I find it a complete mystery. The books fail at a number of different levels as a history of science and I know of historians of science who think very little of it. My own reservations about it as an academic work can be found at ‘Charles Freeman God’s Philosophers’. Please read them if you are interested and feel free to comment in the space provided. As I say there it is a ‘good read’ and Hannam writes as if with great authority. It is when you compare the work with recent scholarship or follow up his arguments ( sadly many of his assertions are not properly footnoted so it is not easy) that his argument quickly crumbles. I know of no other example of the ‘discontinuity thesis’, that there was medieval progress that was brought to a halt by the humanists until Galileo rediscovered medieval ‘science’. It is fine to go out on a limb, how else is scholarship to progress, but you do need to provide sources!! I thought scientists were especially hot on that and would have checked up on him.
Arvid. P.S. You can equally ask why in the United States it has been adopted by the conservative right. It’s the same text with a different title and sells alongside some very strange ‘unscientific’ titles, if the Amazon listing is anything to go by. As you all see from my critique, I say lots of positive things about the book as ‘a spirited jaunt’ as one reviewer well described it, but it cannot pretend to be an academic work.
My purpose here was to see whether more technocratic people than myself could tell me how an obscure website can bounce up disparaging references to myself so high on the Google listings. That problem has been solved-of course, I assume that you cannot disentangle a high listing once it has been put up there! I must have had some 150 reviews of my Closing of the Western Mind so getting his to the top was quite a feat. The games people play!
Thank you for your reply, Mr Freeman. I can’t judge Regnery, though I suppose finding a publisher for popular history of science books is not easy. I don’t think it is that telling on its own, in my country it is being published by a publisher focused on art, literature, society and science after all. But I will read your review again for your other points!
About the high listing, it does not seem sinister to me, the site has many internal links to various articles so it has a high PageRank and it might get quite a number of links from other sites with high PageRanks. If you look at the review, it is both rather long and the terms “Closing of the Western Mind”, “Charles” and “Freeman” get a decent amount of hits (5, 3 and 20 respectively). So I think the high ranking is quite ordinary.
Best wishes.
Dear Arvid, Thanks for yours. I think all the evidence fits otherwise but it is really of curiosity value as the Hannam review seems not to have been hardly noticed in any discussions I have seen on the net and sales have gone on regardless.There have been some 150 reviews of Closing of the Western Mind I expect many people would look first at the Amazon ones.I have been amazed that it still sells ten years on and it is the book that people want to discuss with me when they come up after I have done a lecture on something completely different! I wish all my books had done so well.
The high listing in the UK of the disjointed discussion on Quodlibeta of my Holy Bones, that outclassed the Sunday Telegraph, the main history magazines, Yale University Press’s own website, etc, etc, is in some ways more interesting because it is so irrelevant to the topic.
Do feel free to comment on my review if you would like to, best wishes, Charles
“James Hannam has no background in the ancient world, his PhD is on sixteenth century Oxford”.
Could Dr. Freeman tell us something about his PhD?
And the subject of his master’s degree in African History and Politics ?