ABSTRACT
Viewed in the widest historical perspective, the explosive development of science in seventeenth-century Europe is one of the most astonishing events in the whole of human history. It makes that civilization unlike any other. For the first time people all over the world are joined together by rapid communications, easy travel and extensive trade. Why did this understanding of the detailed structure of the world that we call science develop and come to maturity just when and where it did? This is a question that can lead us to the heart of the relation between science and the Christian basis of our civilization. It is usual to discuss the relation of science to religion as if they are two
independent activities. We can then compare and contrast their objectives, their modes of procedure and the status of their conclusions. This is not without value, but it presupposes that they are two independent activities that have somehow to be related to each other. This directs attention away from the central point that is essential for the understanding of their relationship, namely that when seen in the perspective of history there is an organic connection between them. Science as we know it is based on certain definite beliefs about the world. Many of them were first formulated by the ancient Greeks but were not sufficient to establish science as a continuing enterprise. Modern science began only when they were reinforced and extended by the religious beliefs of the Hebrews and finally brought to completion by the theology of Christian Europe. If we look at the great civilizations of the past, in China and India, in
Babylon and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, we frequently find well-developed social structures, magnificent artistic and architectural achievements, imperishable drama and philosophy, but nothing remotely equivalent to modern science. We find great skill in the working of wood and metal, ingenious mechanical contrivances and perceptive philosophical speculations about the world, but not the detailed quantitative understanding of matter, from quarks to galaxies, expressed as the solution of a few differential equations, that is the hallmark of the more developed areas of modern science. Most of the great civilizations of the past were able to provide all the
material requirements for the growth of science. There was a leisured class, technical skills and systems of writing and mathematics. Obviously this by itself is not enough. What was lacking was the attitude towards the material world that is the essential precondition of science, and in some cases a social structure that allows new ideas to flourish.
