Machina mundi: How medieval thinkers foreshadowed modern science

Henrik Lagerlund and Sylvain Roudaut on how modern science was anticipated in the Middle Ages in Aeon magazine.

The predominant assumption about the rise of modern science is that it went hand in hand with the conception of nature as a universal mechanism. By viewing nature in this way, it could be studied, analysed and experimented upon with mathematical rigour, and its functioning could be elucidated by physicists harnessing empirical methods.

Aeon magazine