Islam Creator of the Modern Age
1. Islam: Creator of the Modern Age
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remained in great awe. (Whole volumes have been
written on this very vast subject, including an
encyclopaedia.)
Greek mythology formed the staple of most
Greek poetry and drama. It also inf luenced
the thinking of philosophers and historians
to a marked degree. Medieval poets and
nearly all the English poets from Shakespeare
to Robert Bridges turned to it for inspirat ion .
But st imulat ing as it was to the arts and
literature, it failed to provide the kind of
ambience in which men of science, in the
modern sense of the word, could f lourish .
The Greeks may have had the most
illustrious civi lizat ion of ancient t imes, but
they did nothing to set in mot ion the
processes of scient if ic thinking, which came
much later to Europe. If scient if ic thought
reached Europe, it was ent irely due to the
st imulus given to it by the Muslims, for, up
to that point , the concept of polytheism had
acted as a deterrent to progress. The concept
