ISLAM: THE LIBERATOR OF THE MIND

~ 68 ~ development in knowledge, religion and legal systems in the complete absence of a conception of science as it is now understood. Such were the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and the western hemisphere. Even the Hebrews, people whose religion forms a large part of the basis of European civilization, were indifferent to science. Although some two and a half millennia ago the Greeks created a system of thought that was similar to the scientific, in succeeding centuries there was little progress beyond their achievement and little comprehension of it. The great power of science and its pervasive influence on all aspects of life are thus very recent developments. The dawn of European science has traditionally been located among the philosophers of the Greek city states on the coast and islands of the eastern Mediterranean, in the later sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Their work is known only through fragmentary references, and brief quotations made by authors who came later, perhaps by hundreds of years.29