Islam Creator of the Modern Age
1. Islam: Creator of the Modern Age
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water screw. But it is strange that these Greek
scientific minds shone only temporarily, like
meteors, and then disappeared. They failed to usher
Europe, or even Greece itself, into the age of science
and industry. A very long intellectual gap is found
between the learning of the ancient Greeks and that
of modern scientific Europe. While Archimedes had
invented the water screw as early as 260 B.C., the
first machine press was not invented until 1450, by
Germany’s J. Gutenberg. The interval between the
two is more than one thousand five hundred years.
What was the reason for this gap? Why did ancient
Greek science find no continuation either in Greece
or elsewhere in Europe? The answer is that before
the Islamic revolution, the atmosphere was totally
opposed to scientific research being freely carried
out. It was not until the revolution brought about
by Islam, on the basis of monotheism, that all
obstacles could be removed from the path of
scientific progress. This was the first time in history
that there had been such a liberation of the intellect.
Scientific progress, to be effective, must be a
continuous process. The work of the Greek scholars,
