The Roots of Science
Subtitle: An Investigative Journey Through the World's Religions
Publisher: DeepSight Trust
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Auckland, New Zealand
Number of pages: 204
Subjects: Religion; Science
First sentence: In this book we shall be travelling in our minds, over a route that took some of our ancestors 3000 years or more to traverse.
Description: Science from the Greeks, law from the Romans, religion from the Hebrews - so runs the popular stereotype.
This new search shows how Greeks tried for science, but failed because of their theology.  Tribal cultures, such as Maori, Zulu and Sioux, could not even try for science.  The great civilizations and the Asian religions produced impressive technologies, but never science.
The Hebrew people had to borrow their technologies and produced no science.  They did, however, produce a worldview that both enabled and required science.  Their radical de-sacralization of space, time and matter, and of social structures, represents one of the great cultural revolutions in history, and was expressed in the contrast between temple and synagogue.  When this was developed within Christian Western Europe, science as we know it arose in the 16th century.
Dr Turner sets out the historical origins and essential cultural basis of science, and rediscovers the sixth century John Philoponus and the greatest theoretical physicist before Newton.
This absorbing and important work breaks new ground to uncover the historical roots of science.
Table of contents: pagenum: 14
class: chapter
title: Introduction; pagenum: 21
class: part
title: The Tribal Societies; pagenum: 35
class: part
title: The Axial Religions; pagenum: 54
class: part
title: The Hebrew Revolution: De-sacralization; pagenum: 79
class: part
title: Christianity in the Early Centuries; pagenum: 109
class: part
title: Europe's Conversion and the Rise of Islam; pagenum: 119
class: part
title: History of Science in the Middle Ages; pagenum: 127
class: part
title: The Persistence of Dualism; pagenum: 134
class: part
title: Unexpected Confirmation from Tribal Cultures; pagenum: 144
class: part
title: Revisionist Spirituality in the 20th Century; pagenum: 155
class: part
title: Religious and Scientific Reversions; pagenum: 170
class: part
title: Return to Reality: Science and Theology in Partnership