European Science in The Middle Ages Comprised The Study of Nature, Mathematics and

European science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature, mathematics and natural
philosophy in medievalEurope. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline
in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of
ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars
from Isidore and Bede to Buridan and Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, during
the Early Middle Ages Western Europe would see a period of scientific decline. However, by the
time of the High Middle Ages, the West had rallied and was on its way to once more taking the
lead in scientific discovery (see Scientific Revolution).
According to Pierre Duhem, who founded the academic study of medieval science as a critique
of the Enlightenment-positivist theory of a 17th-century anti-Aristotelian and anticlerical
scientific revolution, the various conceptual origins of that alleged revolution lay in the 12th to
14th centuries, in the works of churchmen such as Aquinas and Buridan.[1]
In the context of this article, "Western Europe" refers to the European cultures bound together by
the Roman Catholic Church and the Latin language.
In the ancient world, Greek had been the primary language of science. Even under the Roman
Empire, Latin texts drew extensively on Greek work, some pre-Roman, some contemporary;
while advanced scientific research and teaching continued to be carried on in the Hellenistic side
of the empire, in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited
success.[3]
As the knowledge of Greek declined during the transition to the Middle Ages, the Latin West
found itself cut off from its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. Most scientific inquiry
came to be based on information gleaned from sources which were often incomplete and posed
serious problems of interpretation. Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science only had
access to books by such Roman writers as Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus
Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later Latin encyclopedists. Much had to be gleaned from
non-scientific sources: Roman surveying manuals were read for what geometry was included.
During the 9th Century, these small embers of preserved knowledge leapt to life, as Western
Europeans tried to systemize education; rulers and church leaders realized that education was the
key to maintaining unity and peace. This period was known as the Carolingian Renaissance, a
time when Charles the Great, often known as Charlemagne, tried to reestablish knowledge as a
cornerstone of medieval society.
This period may not have seen the great technological advances of the Greeks, Romans, Chinese,
Persians, or Muslims, but the contribution of great thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas,
Grosseteste, Francis Bacon, and William of Ockham to the creation of the Scientific Method
cannot be underestimated.
Thomas Aquinas, while more interested in using philosophy to prove the existence of God,
oversaw a shift from Platonic reasoning towards Aristotelian empiricism. Robert Grosseteste,
one of the major contributors to the scientific method, founded the Oxford Franciscan School
and began to promote the dualistic scientific method first proposed by Aristotle.
His idea of resolution and composition involved experimentation and prediction; he firmly
believed that observations should be used to propose a universal law, and this universal law
should be used to predict outcomes. This was very similar to the idea of ancient astronomers,
who used observations to discern trends, and used these trends to create predictive models for
astronomical events.
Grosseteste was one of the first to set this out as an empirical process and his idea influenced
such luminaries as Galileo, and underpinned the 17th Century Age of Enlightenment. However,
his biggest influence was more immediate, reflected in the impact to the scientific method made
by his pupil, Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon is a name that belongs alongside Aristotle, Avicenna, Galileo, and Newton as one
of the great minds behind the formation of the scientific method. He took the work of
Grosseteste, Aristotle, and the Islamic alchemists, and used it to propose the idea of induction as
the cornerstone of empiricism. He described the method of observation, prediction (hypothesis),
and experimentation, also adding that results should be independently verified, documenting his
results in fine detail so that others might repeat the experiment.
With a nod towards the Islamic scholars, such as Ibn Sina ands Al-Battani, any student writing
an experimental paper is following the tradition laid down by Bacon. Both Bacon and
Grosseteste studied optics, and Bacon devised a plan for creating a telescope, although there is
no evidence to suggest that he actually built one, leaving the honor to Galileo. Bacon also
petitioned the Pope to promote the teaching of natural science, a lost discipline in medieval
Europe.
It seems strange that the advances of many of these philosophers and scholars became forgotten
and underplayed in favor of the later thinkers that would drive the Renaissance and the Age of
Enlightenment. However, the first Renaissance of the Middle Ages was halted by a natural
phenomenon, the Black Death, which killed over a third of Europeans, especially in the growing
urban areas.
The mass disruption to medieval society caused by the plague set the progress of science and
discovery back, and the knowledge would not reemerge until the Renaissance.

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