Why did modern science and scientism emerge in Western Europe?
Since its inception, Christianity has been fundamentally a universalist and outward-focused faith. The apostles were tasked with delivering the gospel to all peoples, and Saint Paul underlined that there would be “neither Jew nor Greek,” indicating that ethnic distinctions would lose significance in religious matters.
The spread of Christianity was unusual, relying on persuading an empire that initially rejected the new religion. Yet, the culture of that empire created fertile ground for Christianity’s growth: a deep respect for philosophy, knowledge, and reason. Although Rome practiced a conventional paganism without philosophical depth, it held philosophy in the highest regard and allowed thinkers extensive freedom to pursue knowledge without religious constraints. Consequently, Christianity, which began among humble fishermen in the outskirts of Judea, was encouraged by the Roman setting to evolve intellectually and engage with philosophy. The trajectory Christianity followed was challenging and gradual but mirrored the swift and seamless assimilation of Greek culture into the Roman world.
Christianity also had an inherent quality that made this intellectual journey possible. Unlike Judaism and Islam, which are bound by strict written codes intertwined with customary laws and leave limited latitude for rational inquiry, Christianity departed from the rigid first-century Jewish context. Jesus’ teachings did not tether future Christian developments to Jewish law; instead, the old law was set aside, freeing Christians from concerns such as food restrictions or circumcision. When law is not explicitly given, reason must be deployed to establish it across different nations, eras, and institutions. The Church’s Canon Law, rooted in Roman Law, reflects this rational exercise.
Therefore, Christianity stands out as perhaps the most rationalistic religion since Antiquity. It uniquely embraced rationalism in a coherent way: while paganism remained largely neutral to speculation, Christianity treated reason as a divine gift to be seriously pursued. Seeking truth—be it about the natural world or matters of faith—was regarded as both a noble and essential duty to avoid error. The notion that the civilization culminating in the Aristotelian St. Thomas Aquinas was an epicenter of obscurantism and irrationality is largely a product of later Protestant and Enlightenment narratives. This is a misinterpretation, especially considering that it was Luther himself who famously called reason “the devil’s whore,” opposing it as an adversary of faith.
If Western Christianity embraced rationalism in some measure, then Western Europe has spent greater spans as a rationalist culture than a purely Christian one. This suggests that the Protestant Reformation inflicted deeper wounds on rationalism than on Catholicism itself. Indeed, when faced with a choice between faith and reason, many in Western Europe abandoned reason in favor of faith.
It is unsurprising, then, that modern science originated in Catholic regions and flourished throughout Western Europe—whether under Catholic, Protestant, or Enlightenment influences. Because Protestant and Enlightenment accounts often rewrite history, it is important to recall that the major breakthrough in modern science—the Copernican Revolution—involved a Pole (Copernicus), an Italian (Galileo), and a Frenchman (Descartes, who was not a Huguenot). Descartes was the first philosopher capable of formulating a metaphysical foundation for the new physics implied by the Copernican model, which contradicted Aristotelian cosmology where earth, being the heaviest element, was the universe’s center, and everything beyond the moon was composed of the light ether.
Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (1543) was only placed on the Index in the 17th century. The Church allowed significant speculative freedom in natural philosophy, encompassing physics and astronomy. Copernicus offered a theoretical astronomical model that readers knew was difficult to reconcile fully with the Church’s natural philosophy.
Opposition to heliocentrism did not come solely from Catholic defenders of Aristotelianism. Luther and Melanchthon opposed Copernican ideas on religious grounds and led a campaign against them. Attempts were even made to reconcile Copernican calculations with geocentrism; for instance, the Lutheran astronomer Tycho Brahe proposed a model where planets orbit the sun, which in turn orbits the earth.
The Church’s universal stance on heliocentrism was not simply a conflict between faith and reason. Rather, the Church adhered to an established official philosophy—Aristotelianism Christianized by Thomas Aquinas. While speculative thought was welcomed to a degree, the Church was reluctant to abandon its physics and astronomy without an alternative, which is what Galileo recklessly challenged despite his close ties to the pope.
The Protestant realm—despite initially rejecting Copernicus as stemming from “the devil’s whore”—embraced the study of nature as a means to criticize Catholic reliance on false philosophy. What began as blatant irrationalism evolved into a conviction that Protestants defended scientific liberty against the Inquisition’s perceived darkness. Along with religious freedom, the Protestant world demanded freedom for science.
Though Protestants could have isolated themselves and developed sect-specific sciences, much like the Soviets attempted with Soviet biology (Lysenkoism), most Protestant scientists accepted the notion of universal science even where they declined universality in faith. True science, therefore, had to apply equally to Catholic and Protestant scholars. Instead of adhering to restrictions imposed by the Index, Catholic scientists maintained intellectual exchanges with their Protestant peers. For this reason, the universality expelled by the Reformation resurfaced within science, which is the root of scientism: when science serves as the common denominator in a religiously diverse society, scientists gain political and moral authority.
It is worth noting that adopting science as a neutral platform had a precedent in the Middle Ages through Aristotelian philosophy. The study and interpretation of Aristotle’s works united Jews, Christians, and Muslims in recognizing a realm of rational authority separate from faith. Considering this medieval dialogue, the extensive Byzantine scholarship, and especially the remarkable mathematical innovations of the Muslim world, it raises questions about why these civilizations did not foster a comparable development leading to modern science.
This discussion explains the emergence of modern science and scientism in Western Europe. The question remains: why did it fail to arise in other regions?
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