ABSTRACT
Today science is practiced across the globe, and communication between scientists in different countries is quick, particularly with the use of the Internet. Language barriers still exist, but are of much less importance than in any other time in human history, as English has become the international language of science. In the Middle Ages, the period roughly from the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE to the beginnings of European global expansion in the fifteenth century, scientific communication, like communication in general, was slow and often required expertise in two or even three languages. Scientific works were laboriously written and copied by hand, on media that were relatively rare and expensive. Out of the cultural matrix of the Mediterranean, however, modern science was formed in the contact between civilizations.
