<P> The history professor Peter Harrison attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution: </P> <P> historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West . Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions...Yet, many of the leading figures in the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced . </P> <P> The Scientific Revolution was built upon the foundation of ancient Greek learning and science in the Middle Ages, as it had been elaborated and further developed by Roman / Byzantine science and medieval Islamic science . Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science . The "Aristotelian tradition" was still an important intellectual framework in the 17th century, although by that time natural philosophers had moved away from much of it . Key scientific ideas dating back to classical antiquity had changed drastically over the years, and in many cases been discredited . The ideas that remained, which were transformed fundamentally during the Scientific Revolution, include: </P> <Ul> <Li> Aristotle's cosmology that placed the Earth at the center of a spherical hierarchic cosmos . The terrestrial and celestial regions were made up of different elements which had different kinds of natural movement . <Ul> <Li> The terrestrial region, according to Aristotle, consisted of concentric spheres of the four elements--earth, water, air, and fire . All bodies naturally moved in straight lines until they reached the sphere appropriate to their elemental composition--their natural place . All other terrestrial motions were non-natural, or violent . </Li> <Li> The celestial region was made up of the fifth element, aether, which was unchanging and moved naturally with uniform circular motion . In the Aristotelian tradition, astronomical theories sought to explain the observed irregular motion of celestial objects through the combined effects of multiple uniform circular motions . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> The Ptolemaic model of planetary motion: based on the geometrical model of Eudoxus of Cnidus, Ptolemy's Almagest, demonstrated that calculations could compute the exact positions of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets in the future and in the past, and showed how these computational models were derived from astronomical observations . As such they formed the model for later astronomical developments . The physical basis for Ptolemaic models invoked layers of spherical shells, though the most complex models were inconsistent with this physical explanation . </Li> </Ul>

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