The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (2003) is a book by the classical historian Charles Freeman, in which he discusses the relationship between the Greek philosophical tradition and Christianity, primarily in the fourth to sixth century AD. He argues that far from suppressing Greek philosophy, Christianity integrated the more authoritarian aspects of Platonism at the expense of the Aristotelian tradition. He explores the contribution of the Roman emperors to the definition of Christian doctrine, an argument followed up in his 2009 book AD 381. He dates "the reopening of the western mind" to the integration of Aristotle's thought into Christian doctrine by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Academic analysis This book received generally positive reviews from mass media such as the article in The New York Times listed below. The following are some critiques by scholars who take issue with Freeman's detailed description of the relative importance of the enlightenment and religious (mostly Christian) mythology. In The Beginnings of Western Science, science historian David C. Lindberg explains the history of science's role in the Middle Ages, where it was preserved by the Christians and monks. He argues that the suggestion that early Christians destroyed science is an outdated myth. He criticizes those, like Freeman, who he believes perpetuate these outdated myths despite conventional scholarship refuting them. Specifically regarding Charles Freeman, Lindberg writes the following: “Finally, to demonstrate that such views are alive and well, I quote Charles Freeman in his Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (2003): By the fifth century of the Christian era, he argues, “not only has rational thought been suppressed, but there has been a substitution for it of ‘mystery, magic, and authority’. It is little wonder, given this kind of scholarly backing, that the ignorance and degradation of the Middle Ages has become an article of faith among the general public, achieving the status of invulnerability merely by virtue of endless repetition.” In Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion by Ronald Numbers, another historian of science, it states that “The misleading accounts of Hypatia’s death and Freeman’s Closing of the Western Mind, quoted above, are attempts to keep alive an old myth: the portrayal of early Christianity as a haven of anti- intellectualism, a fountainhead of antiscientific sentiment, and one of the