Experimental science owes its beginnings in Western
Europe to the influx of treatises from the Near East,
by way of translations from Greek and Arabic, which
gradually acquainted the Schoolmen with the entire
Aristotelian corpus and with the computational tech-
niques of antiquity. The new knowledge merged with
an Augustinian tradition prevalent in the universities,
notably at Oxford and at Paris, deriving from the
Church Fathers; this tradition owed much to Platonism
and Neo-Platonism, and already was favorably disposed
toward a mathematical view of reality. The empirical
orientation and systematization of Aristotle were wel-
comed for their value in organizing the natural history
and observational data that had survived the Dark Ages
through the efforts of encyclopedists, while the new
methods of calculation found a ready reception among
those with mathematical interests. The result was the
appearance of works, first at Oxford and then at Paris,
which heralded the beginnings of modern science in
the Middle Ages.
