Strayer, Chapter 16 pp 477 - 488

The scientific breakthroughs of the early modern period can be attributed somewhat to the preservation of texts from the Greco-Roman world and innovations and improvements upon the original ideas by Arab scholars between 800 A.D. – 1400 A.D. Arabs scholars made strides in astronomy, mathematics, optics, medicine, that far exceeded the technological and scientific gains within Europe. Similarly, Confucian China of the same period didn’t have a lot of religious dogma holding back scientific and technological innovations. However, there had been some legal institutions, codes of law and academic institutions that had grown separate from the Catholic Church, whereas within Islam there was no such distinctions in the way science and technology had evolved. The University of Paris, for example was built upon a cooperative or guild model with masters and (apprentices) scholars, which could both admit or expel students, as well as establish core curriculum, teaching credentials ad nauseam. This model was repeated in several European universities. A time came when scholars in Europe started to take charge of their own understanding of science and technology, in which God wasn’t responsible for their sense of knowledge and intellect. Whereas in Islam there was a limit; there was a fundamental belief amongst Muslims that all knowledge came from God. So, an Islamic scholar had limits on how much he or she could study and postulate before it challenged the theological dictums of the Koran. The Koran even said apparently, “May God protect us from useless knowledge. Chinese academic institutions also restricted freedom of thought. Their focus was geared towards preparing scholars with a rigorous set of studies emphasizing humanistic and and moral texts that conformed to Confucian morality. The Chinese scholars acquired knowledge to be more efficient in their civic duties rather than for personal enrichment of knowledge they had learned.

It was during this time that scholars like Copernicus postulated that the earth was not the center of the universe and that the planets revolved around the sun. It was considered heresy, and the Catholic Church didn’t pardon the heresy charge for centuries. It’s estimated that some of his work drew upon the astronomical work down in Maragha, Persia 200 years prior. Discovering the new world suggested that the Church didn’t know everything. They didn’t know about all these new people, these new continents, new commodities, and new ideas. So, it was only natural that the age of scientific discovery began in Europe when it did. It was when skepticism became more predominant in western European thinking.  The culmination of the scientific revolution occurred with the work of Sir Isaac Newton’s studies about the universe and gravity. Because of Newton’s ideas, scientists and scholars left behind superstition and believed there was a certain order to the way nature and the universe work in terms of cause and effect. God was removed from the equation. Man was no longer under the minor status of God, but rather, with science, mankind could chart and predict his own destiny. Descarte said, “Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore, I am).”