ABSTRACT
Science and technology are not generally associated with medieval Christendom, but this way of thinking is to misunderstand the period. If science is about the detailed understanding of the material world expressed in the form of mathematical equations that enable the course of phenomena to be predicted with great accuracy, then its origins can be found in the western Europe of the medieval epoch. Such an approach to ‘natural philosophy’ was based on the beliefs that stem from the doctrines of creation and incarnation: that the material world is good, rational and open to the human mind. Indeed, the Christian belief in the creation of the world in time broke the strength of the Aristotelian views that had curtailed the rise of science for many centuries. Medieval natural philosophers were in awe of nature and sought a unified world picture, a theme summarised in the 1272 inscription on the pavement of Westminster Abbey: ‘Here is the perfectly rounded sphere which reveals the eternal pattern of the universe.’
