Science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature—including practical disciplines, mathematics and natural philosophy—in medieval Europe. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Buridan and Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, Western Europe would see during the Early Middle Ages a period of intellectual stagnation. During the High Middle Ages, however, the West had begun to reorganize itself and was on its way to again taking the lead in scientific discovery (see Scientific Revolution).
According to Pierre Duhem, who founded the academic study of medieval science as a critique of the Enlightenment-positivist theory of a 17th century anti-Aristotelian and anticlerical scientific revolution, the various conceptual origins of that alleged revolution lay in the 12th to 14th centuries, in the works of churchmen such as Aquinas and Buridan.
In the context of this article Western Europe refers to the European cultures bound together by the Roman Catholic Church and the Latin language.
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