Modern science has grown out of Christian soil. This has been documented by many people, not necessarily Christians themselves. It was stressed by such writers as Alfred North Whitehead, the widely respected mathematician and philosopher, and J. Oppenheimer, who wrote on a wide range of subjects related to science after becoming director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1947. More importantly, it has been amply substantiated within the new discipline of the history of science by scholars such as Duhem, Crombie, Jaki, Nebelsick and Kaiser.

However, in order to understand more clearly the influence of Christian thought in the development of modern science, it is necessary to give some space to understanding the weaknesses of earlier systems of thinking.