The roots of modern science reach backwards in time to before the great age of Greek and Hellenistic learning, and spread across Europe, Islamic empires, India and China. This article will review how the ideas of the Medieval and Renaissance periods nourished those roots.
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Under the aegis of the Roman Empire, early Christianity morphed into Christendom and incorporated ideas from Greek philosophy. These composite ideas spawned the ‘natural philosophy’ that later became modern science. The Black Death, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment nurtured science and simultaneously planted the seeds of Christendom’s destruction.
In Europe, and consequently in America after its colonization by Europeans, Christendom helped shape the culture from which the world as we know it today emerged.
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A brief review of the rise and fall of Christendom in Western Europe that illustrates the inevitable entanglement of politics, culture, and philosophy with questions about the relationship of religion to science.
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Modern Science arose within a context dominated by Western Philosophy with its roots in ancient Greece, as we will see in later units of this course. Eastern Philosophy, with its roots in ancient Chinese thought, makes very different assumptions about the nature of reality. The resources on this web page supported the discussions at this module of the course
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A description of what motivated me to develop a 12-part course for u3a, covering our common reality, the shaping of the modern world, and issues facing the modern world.
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