Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/156

 establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for more than 1500 years. The work begun by Aristotle and carried on to such a high state of relative perfection by Archimedes, was stifled by the early Christians. An atmosphere was then created in which physical science could not grow. The general belief derived from the New Testament was that the end of the world was at hand, and the early Church Fathers poured contempt upon all investigators of the science of nature.

Then, too, for science there was established an insurmountable barrier, in that the most careful inductions of science from ascertained facts must conform to the view of nature given in the myth and legends of the Bible. For 1500 years science was forced to confine itself to a system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural texts. It was the accepted word of the clergy that science was futile and dangerous which led to the discrediting of Roger Bacon's works.

In 1163 Pope Alexander III forbade the study of physics to all ecclesiastics, which of course, in that age, meant prohibition of all. such scientific studies to the only persons likely to follow them.

Roger Bacon was first to practice extensively the experimental method of science. Through his researches the 154