Classical thinkers did not conduct scientific experiments. They did not test new ideas to find out whether they were true. They based their conclusions on "common sense." Doing so led to many false beliefs. An example of this occurred in Roman times because of the ideas of the astronomer Ptolemy (TAH • luh • mee).
Ptolemy was born in Egypt. He had a geocentric (JEE • oh • SEHN • trihk) theory. Geocentric means “Earth-centered.” Ptolemy believed the sun and the planets moved around the Earth. Europeans accepted his theory for the next 1,400 years. Medieval Science Most medieval Europeans were interested in religious ideas. Hardly anyone spent time studying nature.
For the most part, people based their ideas about science on ancient classical writings. They saw no need to research the facts and draw their own conclusions. Many classical writings, however, were not well preserved. Sometimes the people who copied the old texts made errors, or mistakes. At times, those errors changed the information in the writings.
At the same time, Arabs and Jews in the Islamic empire preserved Greek and Roman science. They copied many Greek and Roman works into Arabic. They also came into contact with the Indian system of numbers known today as Indian-Arabic. Arab and Jewish scientists made their own advances in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. They did this without conducting any experiments. During the 1100s, European thinkers and Islamic peoples began to have more contact. This led Europeans to renew their interest in science. Europeans began to read Latin copies of Islamic works.
The Indian-Arabic system of numbers reached Europe. Europeans began using it instead of Roman numerals. Thomas Aquinas (uh • KWY • nuhs) and other Christian thinkers showed that Christianity and reason could work together. Europeans also began to build new universities whose teachers and students helped science to grow.
Beginning in the 1400s, to Europeans’ scientific knowledge was expanded through voyages of exploration. Europeans began to create better charts and maps. The charts and maps helped explorers reach different parts of the world. The more the world was explored, the more people learned about the size of oceans and continents. Scientists gathered data about diseases, animals, and plants. They organized the new information. Bit by bit, scientific knowledge grew in Europe. As this happened, people began to have a new understanding of the natural world.
New Ideas About the Universe
Why did European ideas about the universe change during the 1500s and 1600s? In the 1500s, Europeans began to change the way they thought about science. They came to realize that scientists had to use mathematics and experiments to advance. This new way of thinking led to the Scientific Revolution. The revolution changed how Europeans understood science and how they searched for knowledge. Scholars could study new subjects and could challenge old ways of thinking through the legal protection of universities. Because of this, scientific inquiry was associated with universities. As higher learning spread to the Americas in the 1700s, so too did scientific study.