Science and religion, 400 B.C to A.D. 1550

Historian Edward Grant illuminates how today´s scientific culture originated with the religious thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, Christians studied science and natural philosophy only to the extent that these subjects proved useful for a better understanding of the Christian faith, not to acquire knowledge for its own sake. However, with the influx of Greco-Arabic science and natural philosophy into Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian attitude toward science changed dramatically. Despite some tensions in the thirteenth century, the Church and its theologians became favorably disposed toward science and natural philosophy and used them extensively in their theological deliberations.
Table of Contents: * Introduction * Aristotle and the Beginnings of Two Thousand Years of Natural Philosophy * The Emergence and Development of the Sciences in the Greek World * The First Six Centuries of Christianity: Christian Attitudes Toward Greek Philosophy and Science * The Emergence of a New Europe After the Barbarian Invasions: The Interaction of Reason and Church Authority in the Twelfth Century * The Medieval Universities and the Impact of Aristotle´s Natural Philosophy on Learning and Religion in the Thirteenth Century * The Interrelations Between Natural Philosophy and Theology (or Science and Religion) in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries * Relations Between Science and Religion in the Three Great Medieval Civilizations: the Byzantine Empire, Islam, and the Latin West