The story of how Greek science and philosophy was eventually translated, developed and transmitted to Europe through the mediation of Arabic culture is well known. The role played by religious beliefs and institutions in the nurturing of the sciences has, however, been the subject of competing master-narratives. Until relatively recently there has been a tendency in Western historiography to diminish the originality of Muslim thinkers, with a consequent emphasis on Christian values and doctrines in the launch of ‘modern science’. By contrast, Muslim scholars, in celebrating the originality of Arabic astronomy, mathematics, optics and medicine, have tended to present Christianity as a cultural force that, if anything, was (and continued to be) opposed to scientific initiatives. The debate is coloured by the fact that apologists for particular religious beliefs like to present their own tradition as having a special relationship with the sciences. This particular trait is sometimes visible in scholarship that has emphasised the role of the Protestant Reformation in creating favourable conditions for the expansion of science. My argument in this paper will be that it is no longer possible to claim that Christianity gave birth to modern science. At the same time, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both Catholic and Protestant Christianity provided resources for the justification of new, empirical methods of enquiry. While the revival of atomism and the mechanisation of nature generated anxieties for Christian theologians, new ways were found for re-integrating scientific and theological principles that helped to produce an enduring scientific culture in Western Europe.
John Hedley Brooke
