温伯格《解释世界》第三部分 中世纪

古希腊科学所企及高度一直到16和17世纪科学革命才得以重现。希腊人取得的一个伟大发现是自然界某些方面（特别是在光学和天文学）可以用准确的数学语言加以描述，这些数学计算结果与观测结果相符。对光线和天体的研究成果当然重要，但更为重要的是人们学会了认识哪些现象是可以研究的，以及如何进行研究。 无论中世纪的伊斯兰世界或基督教的欧洲都无法与此相媲美。但是从罗马帝国陷落到科学革命的千年间并不完全是文化沙漠。希腊科学成就获得了保存，甚至某些方面在伊斯兰学院和欧洲大学还得以提高。这样就为科学革命打下了基础。 在中世纪不只希腊科学得以保存。我们还会看到中世纪的伊斯兰和基督教世界持续了对哲学，数学和宗教在科学中所起作用的悠久争论。

Science reached heights in the Greek part of the ancient world that were not regained until the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Greeks made the great discovery that some aspects of nature, especially in optics and astronomy, could be described by precise mathematical naturalistic theories that agree with observation. What was learned about light and the heavens was important, but even more important was what was learned about the sort of thing that could be learned, and how to learn it. Nothing during the Middle Ages, either in the Islamic world or in Christian Europe, compares with this. But the millennium intervening between the fall of Rome and the scientific revolution was not an intellectual desert. The achievements of Greek science were preserved and in some cases improved in the institutions of Islam and then in the universities of Europe. In this way, the ground was prepared for the scientific revolution. It was not only the achievements of Greek science that were preserved in the Middle Ages. We will see in medieval Islam and Christendom a continuation of the ancient debates over the role in science of philosophy, of mathematics, and of religion.