Has Religion Slowed Scientific Progress Through History?

aronnax said:
Since Selim I conquered Egypt and Hejaz, the Ottomans were practically, Islam's most powerful empire and leading state and representative. Given that there were also the most 'advanced'/'Europeanised' Islamic state for four centuries, I think it is fair to use the Ottomans as a general representation of Islamic Scientific thinking.

+1 point.

aronnax said:
The point of that paragraph was to show that the general Islamic world view was against learning from who they deemed as barbarians and that this world view, even after centuries of political changes, changed very little. Western Europeans may have seen the Muslim as barbarians too

+1 point.

aronnax said:
But not vice-versa. The Quran, for example was already translated and reprinted in large numbers to be sold in the Ottoman Empire by the 16th century.

The Old Testament and New Testament have been in full Arabic translations since at least ~1000AD.

aronnax said:
By the 16th century, European Universities, such as Cambridge and Oxford, Salamanca that had departments for the study of Arabic and Oriental cultures.

Again, the same cannot be said for the Ottoman Empire, much less, the rest of the Islamic Middle East. And this was because Islamic societies were less willing to engage with Europeans than Europeans were with Islamic societies.

Considering that the Ottoman Empire didn't have European Universities I don't see how this matters? But I'm sure if I looked I'd find that the Ottomans had a programme or department, however informal, that dealt with Western affairs. And if that involved hiring Westerners, or Christians, to do it; so be it, that's a policy choice, and a sensible one, and not an intrinsic cultural or religious failing.

aronnax said:
Are you saying that the rejection of the printing press by the elite courts of Europeans were on the same par as the rejection of the printing press by the Ottoman or Moroccan courts? Of course not. European learning was spurred on by the printing press because of nice cheap books and reprints. Islamic society did not have the same privileged having outright refused them for centuries on end.

I'm saying that Europe, and I acknowledge I'm speaking in general terms, was as wary of the printed word as any Islamic nation; not least because of the lessons of the Reformation, a print based Revolution. At its most extreme it could be every bit as restrictive: witness the Index Librorum Prohibitorum . But there's another point that needs it seems to be made again, Islamic society =/ the Ottoman Empire.

aronnax said:
And you didn't attack the main crux of my argument. The quote by Nicholas de Nocolay that summed up my argument about how the Ottomans only learned to use European inventions and warfare via immigrants who have moved into Turkey and not directly just send diplomats/officials/students whatever to said lands to learn.

Because it's no different to what happened in Europe. The French bought Venetian glass, dyers and silk-weavers to France to begin those industries domestically. Conversely, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, French Huguenots took out of France specialised skills involved in the production of high quality clocks, glass and porcelain. Yet we don't criticise Europeans for not just sending students to learn what amounted to state secrets; instead we criticise the Ottomans for not being stupid.

The rest of the post can be summed up as: Ottomans =/ Muslims.
 
I'm interested. How do you research that sort of thing? Isn't it a battle of mainly interpretations, rather then facts?

In the case of that particular project, by carefully examining the historical and theoretical links between the study and theory of history with the study and theory of science, considering the ways in which "progress" in the latter has been considered legitimate at various historical points in science, and examining whether an equal case might be made for saying that it's legitimate in history too.

But something like this isn't really history itself, it's more a combination of history of science and philosophy of history. And research in philosophy is done in much the same way as research in theoretical physics.
 
Say all the Ottoman diplomats for Europe were from minorities , adding Turks into the game would remove a turf for them and open them to foreign meddling ?

You seem a bit too obsessed with that "minorities" idea. Have you ever contemplated the idea that turks were a minority within the Ottoman Empire?
 
One thing people seem to forget is that we can digress from a situation. The most famous examples in the fact that Romans had running water and yet 1000 years later they did not. It was almost 2000 years before the situation would be reversed. So everything does not always progress in a straight fashion. The fall of Rome was one that did help set some things back due to the fact that most people were solely caring about plain survival.
 
One thing people seem to forget is that we can digress from a situation. The most famous examples in the fact that Romans had running water and yet 1000 years later they did not. It was almost 2000 years before the situation would be reversed. So everything does not always progress in a straight fashion. The fall of Rome was one that did help set some things back due to the fact that most people were solely caring about plain survival.

lol. Now you're opening an entirely different can of worms. Please close it posthaste.
 
Short answer: No.

Long answer: Not really, no.

In fact, I think the Renaissance of the 12th(?) Century was pretty much a Catholic-driven progression, coming to an end only due to the numbers killed by the black death.
LightSpectra said:
I'm proud of this forum for most of these responses refuting the myth of ignorant piety.

I'd just like to add that there's no such thing as "religion," and attributing any universal phenomenon to "religion" is a one-way tram to Bad Conclusionville.

This.
 
The characterization of history-as-progress is generally connected with a generalized form of a specific sort of historiography connected with the development of the British political system, referred to pejoratively as "Whig history". Whiggery, not least due to its teleological implications, has no place in historical thought..
I know you are an expert in history and are very knowledgeable of historical events and other facts.

Why is viewing history as a progression of improvements to the well-being of people and society a bad way of looking at it.

Sheesh ... most of us here play a game whereby the winner is usually the one who has improved his civilization technologically. Note: that has probably influenced my thinking as well as my reading of Foundation, many years ago, whereby a key character could predict the future based on observations of society.

I believe that you can look back on history with a wide angle lens and see the general progression of improvements in people lives, society in general and increase in knowledge, science and technological capabilities.

I know I have asked this before, but I can not see any harm this viewpoint on history could be causing.

EDIT: Reading this
“Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man” is a philosophy of history proposed by Nayef Al-Rodhan, where history is defined as ‘a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or all other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times under all circumstances.’[5] This theory views history as a linear progression propelled by good governance, which is, in turn, to be achieved through balancing the emotional, amoral, and egoistic elements of human nature with the human dignity needs of reason, security, human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation, and inclusiveness.

...

Nayef Al-Rodhan concludes that within an increasingly globalised, interconnected and interdependent world, human dignity cannot be ensured globally and in a sustainable way through sole national means. A genuine global effort is required to meet the minimum criteria of human dignity globally. Areas such as conflict prevention, socio-economic justice, gender equality, protection of human rights, environmental protection require a holistic approach and a common action.
Which seems to support my idea.
 
You seem a bit too obsessed with that "minorities" idea. Have you ever contemplated the idea that turks were a minority within the Ottoman Empire?

turks are a minority in Turkey , have you ever contemplated that ?

regarding Ottomans it rarely escapes the attention that a Sultan famously destroying a corrupt military organization on the reputed charges that they refused fight the Greeks in the 1820s , still chose an headgear believed to be Greek in origin as the symbol of modernity . You know , the Porte might have lost the other side of the Aegean but that still left huge amounts of people on this side ?
 
kiwitt said:
Why is viewing history as a progression of improvements to the well-being of people and society a bad way of looking at it.
... because there was little net improvement in the average and subjective well-being (whatever this means) of people and/or societies until the last few centuries. For the average person life was little different from 0AD to 1000AD, and hasn't changed much for a not insignificant proportion of the worlds population (e.g. those on <$1/day) even now. Moreover, progress is subjective insofar as 'progressive' tends to correlate with how we, modern people, do things. Thus running Roman water good, Roman killing for entertainment bad or for another example Roman urbanization good, 'Germanic' 'destruction' of cities bad. We like running water and cities because their similar to our own experience but we don't like killing for entertainment (or the death penalty) because we don't (non-Americans) do it. On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet that some Whig historians liked the Roman's liberal use of the death penalty because it reflected, in part, their views of how criminals should be punished. If we take these two factors together, it puts a hole in the relevance of progress and its usefulness in the study of history. Also, Nayef Al-Rodhan isn't a historian except in the loosest IR (used here as a pejorative) sense of the word.
 
There's a big difference between saying that there is historical progress in some elements of society, or at certain periods in history, and saying that history as a whole is a story of general and universal progress. The latter seems an unreasonable claim but the former does not. Science is the obvious example. It seems beyond dispute to say that science has, overall, progressed since (say) the sixteenth century. It seems reasonable to ask what factors have encouraged or hindered that process. This doesn't commit one to any notion of inherent progress in history, whether one labels that "Whiggish" or not. To seize upon any mention of the word "progress" in a historical context as if it's somehow ruled out of court in any sense whatsoever by irrefutable logic seems to me rather strange, not to mention inconsistent. After all, if people used to believe in historical progress, and now they don't, and they are correct in not doing so, that itself would be a form of progress, wouldn't it?
 
The Old Testament and New Testament have been in full Arabic translations since at least ~1000AD. Were Arab bibles being produced en mass for the comsumption of any society?
Was the fact that Turkish and Arab use of printing press remained very little until the late 19th century and usually in the hands of Europeans/Jews/Christians whereas whatever initial European religious opposition to the printing press died within the first few decades and Europe embraced the printing press.



Considering that the Ottoman Empire didn't have European Universities I don't see how this matters? But I'm sure if I looked I'd find that the Ottomans had a programme or department, however informal, that dealt with Western affairs. And if that involved hiring Westerners, or Christians, to do it; so be it, that's a policy choice, and a sensible one, and not an intrinsic cultural or religious failing.

But the Ottoman Empire had institutions of learning and government-funded organisations for research and so on and the amount of literature they produced regarding the European world was pitiful compared to the works of Europe on the Turks/Arabs. If you find said departments of European learning, that will throw my argument out of the window, but the guy who wrote the argument I argued, a chair of the School of Oriental and African Studies, in his book about how Muslims viewed Europeans couldn't find any worth including in his view. And while I don't want to just hide behind and argue from a book, I can't find a good reason why a man who has devoted his full professional career as a historian, who is and I quote 'famous for his extensive research of the Ottoman archives' would emit out something like a whole department, however informal, to the study of Europe.

I'm saying that Europe, and I acknowledge I'm speaking in general terms, was as wary of the printed word as any Islamic nation; not least because of the lessons of the Reformation, a print based Revolution. At its most extreme it could be every bit as restrictive: witness the Index Librorum Prohibitorum . But there's another point that needs it seems to be made again, Islamic society =/ the Ottoman Empire.

You walked around my point again, whatever European restrictions against the printing press was not as enforced or as long imposed as those of the Islamic world.

Because it's no different to what happened in Europe. The French bought Venetian glass, dyers and silk-weavers to France to begin those industries domestically. Conversely, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, French Huguenots took out of France specialised skills involved in the production of high quality clocks, glass and porcelain. Yet we don't criticise Europeans for not just sending students to learn what amounted to state secrets; instead we criticise the Ottomans for not being stupid.

How is technology that somehow ended up in the hands of the ultimate enemies of Spanish Kings, Jews and converted Christians, amounting to state secrets?
Also, The technology we are talking about here is something general and open. I'm pretty sure that the Catholic Frenchmen knew how to make working clocks and glass, just not the Venetian specialisation.
For example, scientific exploration and discovery did not spread to the Ottomans while every other part of Europe might have heard of great scientist A & B.
It's a bit like how Ottoman and Turkish Poets were well-known in the Islamic world but not in Europe.
And also, you said that the French brought Venetians into France to learn their trade.
That's not the same as accepting expelled refugees who consequently presented European technology to the Ottomans. The Ottomans didn't directly approach some European community and go "I'll give you good money if you teach me to do that".
The only similar situation I think of off the top of my head are the Byzantines and Italy.

The rest of the post can be summed up as: Ottomans =/ Muslims.
No it can't.

You are right that the Ottoman do not represent all of Islam. But it is an Islamic society, still strongly influenced by Islam who gladly and proudly proclaim themselves as the representatives of Islam, following Islamic traditions and laws. And if said Islamic society pretty much ruled the most important centres of the Islamic world, then I cannot see why their actions can't be seen as a good general representation of an Islamic society.
The Ottomans weren't just a Islamic society. They were the Islamic society of their time.

I also have examples from Iran, pre-Ottoman Arab societies and Morocco too.
 
For the average person life was little different from 0AD to 1000AD

For the average person life was also little different from 1000 AD to 1700 AD.

And, before that, from 1000 BC to 0 AD.

For the average person life was certainly much less different from 1000 BC to 1700 AD, than from 1900 AD to 2000 AD.
 
Life may have been pretty bad for the average person until the 1700's. However, a lot of that can be blamed on the Aristocracy and their supporters (religion, royal courts, etc.) for holding onto their power. Which was so strong it took massive revolutions and civil wars to end. Another series seems to have occurred in the "Arab Spring". I would now say however, that the new Aristocracy is the "Mega-Rich" and their supporters (media and banks, etc.). So in that sense things have not improved much.

However, with each succeeding century, we have progressed to understanding a little bit more of the world/universe and how it works. We also, learnt that we need to look after each and the world we live in better. A lot of that could be eastern ideas (e.g. Buddhism) now entering western society, due to improved communications links over the last centuries.

I don't believe that this progress is heading to some kind of utopia, but that each year things will get just a little bit easier and better over time. This is proven by the fact that as conditions have improved, people ended up living longer and the population has risen exponentially, and so much so that that brings with it its own problems, on environment, food/water shortages, etc.

Much also must be made of the fact that we have been able to stop another massive war, like WWI and WWII, which would have disastrous for the world the third time round. This can also be looked on as progress on the diplomatic front.

So progress can be seen everywhere from a "wide-angle" lens. The day I believe, that we will not progress in some way over time, is probably the day that I die.
 
However, with each succeeding century, we have progressed to understanding a little bit more of the world/universe and how it works. We also, learnt that we need to look after each and the world we live in better. A lot of that could be eastern ideas (e.g. Buddhism)

A lot of that was also ideas such as Catholic Social Teaching (Rerum Novarum is commonly considered as its beginning) - which contributed pretty much to the development of the idea of welfare state and such, as well as to the end of so called "Predacious / Wild Capitalism".

a lot of that can be blamed on the Aristocracy and their supporters (religion, royal courts, etc.)

Many people forget that Christianity initially, in its early centuries, was a religion which was - how to call it using just one word, without lenghty explanations of what I mean - "pure", deprived of its later "disadvantages" or "disadvantages" commonly ascribed to it (you know, Crusades, Inquisition, etc.).

What ended the initial "pureness" of Christianity, was the - let's call it so - state-sponsored (that state was Roman Empire) nationalization and state-sponsored (that state was Roman Empire), legal regulation of Christianity. Namely - it was Theodosius I the Great and the council in Constantinople of 381.

In 381 AD Christianity stopped to be just religion, it became an important political tool, a mechanism of exerting political power - for the Roman Emperor and later for Feudal rulers of Europe - especially for the Pope and for the Emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire).

Thus blaming Christianity - as religion -, for all the bad things that are commonly ascribed to it, is a completely faulty reasoning.

Christianity as pure religion - without all the political and ideological context that grew around it throughout centuries - is a religion of love, tolerance, ethos of work and decent lifestyle, harmony and mutual support with other people. This is what is Christianity without all the redundant political & ideological context.

The Papal State was - in fact - also a political organization. The Pope in the Middle Ages was a ruler, a powerful feudal ruler. Who cared for his own interests. And of course interests of Church were also his own interests, since thanks to Church Organization he could influence other European monarchs.

In fact many of Medieval popes - those who know they biographies would agree with me - were not even religious persons. They probably didn't even believe in God, and certainly they didn't give a damn about such "stupid" things like moral lifestyle or other things from the Original Teachings of Jesus.

So the answer to this thread is - No, religion did not slow the scientific progress through history. What slowed the scientific progress through history (if anything did it) - were individual, political and other, interests of certain powerful and greedy people, for whom stopping it was beneficial.

What slowed scientific progress was politics & money of powerful and greedy people. It was only surrounded by "religious (or any other) areola" - religion (or anything else) was just a pretext for those people to justify their actions to "public opinion" (or to "dumb mobs" - if you prefer this term).

In other words:

If not religion, "those on the top" would easily find another excuse to organize the Crusades (of course under different name) or to "convert" the Aztecs.

If not religion, someone would find another excuse to burn that guy who claims that the world is round (authorities told the "dumb mobs" for many years, that it is flat - so they have to burn that guy because he is undermining the prestige of authorities among their subjects, etc., etc.).

Aristocracy and their supporters (religion,

Christianity is originally a religion which rather supports the poor, not the aristocracy (or - to be more precise - treats all people as equal regardless of financial situation). However, when state-sponsored Christianity (= more of a "political regime" than religion) beginned in 381 AD, dignitaries of the Church became part of state-sponsored aristocracy - so it would be against their own interests to continue to support the poor (but of course "officially", in their sermons, they continued to claim that "poverty is better than richness" - after all this guaranteed that there would be more money left for themselves).

This was, however, not connected with the fact that they were dignitaries of the Church.

Today (and in the past too) secular dignitaries of states and other things, are equally corrupted.

So being corrupted was not specific for religious dignitaries (of any religion), by no means. Nor was cheating on and / or "suppressing" their "subjects" / "believers".

Claiming that organized / state-sponsored (be it for example national church with king Henry VIII on top or Catholic Church with Pope on top - Papal State was also a state, for long time - etc.) form of religion is "bad" or that it can "slow down" any sort of progress, is like claiming that any kind of organization is "bad". In fact no of this is wrong / bad "per se" - it allways depends on what kind of people (corrupted or not - to be simplistic) are in the management.
 
And regarding Inquisition - it was not as bad & harmful, "anti-scientific progress", etc., as according to common stereotypes. It also wasn't as bloody (in terms of number of victims & treatment of convicted for heresy) as according to stereotype. At least I felt quite convinced about this after reading the book "W obronie &#346;wi&#281;tej Inkwizycji" ("In defence of Holy Inquisition") written by a philosopher, historian, painter & traveler dr Roman Konik. This book was quite convincing to me in proving that stereotypical Inquisition is a very "demonized" & exaggerated (when it comes negative aspects) version of the one which really existed.

Actually some of the heretic movements against which Inqusition fought, commited much more horrible acts of cruelty & barbarism than Inquisition did...

Not mentioning that many of those heresies were anarchist (anti-state, anti-law, etc.) movements. So once again political aspect appears - in fact the Holy Inquisition was also a state-sponsored organization designed to fight vs anarchists who wanted to abolish state organization / Feudal order in Europe.

Religious / Catholic character was only its secondary feature. Its primary feature was organization chasing anarchism, etc., & its supporters. To summ up: Inquisition was a structure defending "old" social-political-economic order in Europe against "new" order (revolution) or lack of such (anarchy). Religion was a pretext.

In critical moments of history, when followers of some "new order" appear, there is always also someone who defends the "old order".

Politics ("Realpolitik" - using a much later term) & cool calculation of one's interests was always > religion & "religious ideology / ignorance".

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Edit:

BTW:

Domen said:
So the answer to this thread is - No, religion did not slow the scientific progress through history. What slowed the scientific progress through history (if anything did it) - were individual, political and other, interests of certain powerful and greedy people, for whom stopping it was beneficial.

Exactly the same - interests of greedy people - are slowing down scientific progress today, in 21st century (example: patenting genes).

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Edit 2:

However, with each succeeding century, we have progressed to understanding a little bit more of the world/universe and how it works.

But I'm not sure if our "progress in understanding of the world/universe and how it works" really looks like this:



I think it may as well look like this (at least when it comes to dominant trends in culture, philosophy, etc. of each historical era / period): :)



Generally periods of "domination of mind" (as current era - at least in Europe, maybe not in the US considering what I recently read and seen about Jesus & Dinosaurs in the US - maybe they are simply one period ahead of Europe? :)) tend to alternate with periods of "domination of spirit" throughout human history.

Just to mention: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism, etc.
 
Religious / Catholic character was only its secondary feature. Its primary feature was organization chasing anarchism, etc., & its supporters. To summ up: Inquisition was a structure defending "old" social-political-economic order in Europe against "new" order (revolution) or lack of such (anarchy). Religion was a pretext.

No. Absolutely not. Religion wasn't merely a pretext, and the Inquisition wasn't merely a tool of different powers. The Inquisition(s) was one of the main powers of its time, and its agenda was set by its religious dogmas first and foremost. It is true that the extent of its repression is probably exaggerated even today, and certainly was during the late 19th/early 20th century historical (and not-so-historical) works, but it was indeed a force slowing scientific progress. How could an institution so dedicated to censorship, to destruction of unauthorized knowledge, and to the maintenance of the Catholic Church's monopoly on education not be negative for scientific progress?

Christianity in general did that on several occasions in different places where there were no inquisitions (even in late 18th century "rational and liberal" England: the burning of Joseph Priestley's house and laboratory, for example) but having that institution dedicated to repression did more long-term damage than mobs excited by preachers with political agendas could do. Even where those political agendas did exist, however, they existed because some organized religion enabled them.

Because it's no different to what happened in Europe. The French bought Venetian glass, dyers and silk-weavers to France to begin those industries domestically. Conversely, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, French Huguenots took out of France specialised skills involved in the production of high quality clocks, glass and porcelain. Yet we don't criticise Europeans for not just sending students to learn what amounted to state secrets; instead we criticise the Ottomans for not being stupid.

All true, but it cannot hide the fact that the ottomans never did follow up on that. We can argue that natural resources may have had more to do with which parts of Europe industrialized first that religion, or other social aspects, had. But... had the ottomans had a scientific community comparable to that of 18th century England or France, might they not have found ways to explore their own natural resources effectively? I mean, I'm not entirely convinced that the "oil age" must have succeeded coal so late...
The fact was, however, that the ottomans did not possess such a community. Why? That, I think, is what we are arguing. The fact itself, I don't think so.
And I'm going to risk saying that the preferred occupations of local elites, "culture" I guess we can call it, did had a lot to do with the different outcomes. Snd so we get to education, and who controlled it. During the 18th century the french and the english did little censorship compared to the ottomans, the spanish or the portuguese. Religions played a role in that. Specifically, the grip of religion over education in each of these territories. And that was the century of the great divergence, when England and France (among several others) pulled ahead decisively. From then on they had better universities, better trained and equipped researchers, and more successful industrialists. France's grandes ecoles which were outside the control of the church (themselves heirs of state engineering schools also outside that control), and England's religious diversity which also prevented religious monopoly, were relevant. I'm even tempted to guess a similar situation for german lands, but I don't know enough about the control of religion over education there.
 
No. Absolutely not. Religion wasn't merely a pretext, and the Inquisition wasn't merely a tool of different powers. The Inquisition(s) was one of the main powers of its time, and its agenda was set by its religious dogmas first and foremost. It is true that the extent of its repression is probably exaggerated even today, and certainly was during the late 19th/early 20th century historical (and not-so-historical) works, but it was indeed a force slowing scientific progress. How could an institution so dedicated to censorship, to destruction of unauthorized knowledge, and to the maintenance of the Catholic Church's monopoly on education not be negative for scientific progress?

The Portuguese and Roman inquisitions were established as a sort of ad hoc defense attorney institution, since their primary purpose was to investigate (and eventually exonerate in 99%+ of cases) lower-class people who were accused of heresy or witchcraft. The only case that the Roman inquisition involved itself in anything scientific to my knowledge is the Galileo case, which was eventually ruled in Galileo's favor (until this ruling was retracted on account of Galileo being wildly disrespectful of the ruling authorities, despite having the go-ahead to continue researching heliocentrism).

The Spanish inquisition was not under the authority of the Papacy, and the Spanish monarchs used it for their own political ends. The Spanish inquisition received its charter by Pope Sixtus IV, who latter sent a bull condemning the Spanish monarchy for misusing it in 1482. They promptly ignored the bull.

Even where those political agendas did exist, however, they existed because some organized religion enabled them.

In the same way you're currently enabling serial killers by tolerating a society in which they exist, sure.
 
The Portuguese and Roman inquisitions were established as a sort of ad hoc defense attorney institution, since their primary purpose was to investigate (and eventually exonerate in 99%+ of cases) lower-class people who were accused of heresy or witchcraft.

You're leaving out the fact that the ones doing the accusing in the first place were the church inquisitors themselves! So they offered a trial, it doesn't negate the evil they did in the first place by placing the charges!

The Spanish inquisition was not under the authority of the Papacy, and the Spanish monarchs used it for their own political ends. The Spanish inquisition received its charter by Pope Sixtus IV, who latter sent a bull condemning the Spanish monarchy for misusing it in 1482. They promptly ignored the bull.

They were out of direct control by the Pope, but they were part of the church, directed and staffed by clergy who were part of the institution, usually with powerful and well-connected nobles at the top. So they weren't being used by the political power, they were the political power. And they were also the Church. One Inquisitor-General in Portugal even went on to take the crown.
The nobility and the Church simply could not be separated, not until the mid-18th century did nobles cease sending many of their daughters to convents and get their sons into the clergy. Thankfully then the church's influence, its tight marriage to the upper classes, started collapsing very quickly. Nobles suddenly ceased sending their sons and daughters to convents, who from then on relied more on people from middle and lower strata of society. Why it happened I can only speculate, but the change was sudden. The modernization of the state and development of a court aristocracy which no longer needed offices in the clergy to secure income? Perhaps. It is interesting that it also coincided, In Portugal as in England and in France, with the demand by the crown for more officers for military and administrative jobs in Europe and in its growing overseas empires. Whatever the reason, the result was that in short order the church's monopoly over education also started crumbling, as these political elites would no longer feel a need to behave by the Church's rules.

In that, at lest, England was fortunate to have Henry VIII seize the church's wealth. English nobility, I expect, would then not push their sons and daughters into the clergy to the same extent. Or did they? I expect that fewer man-hours put into worthless (for science) theology did meant more put into industry and just scientific curiosity. Southern Europe's universities remained distressingly focused on theology and law, and solely that, well into the 19th century.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Catholic Church was especially evil and deliberately stifling science during that period. But I am saying that its institutional arrangements over the period did cause that. And that while it can be argued that it provided education, its jealously guarded monopoly over education was negative.
 
I'm even tempted to guess a similar situation for german lands, but I don't know enough about the control of religion over education there.
Well first we had the fractured state of Germany, which I'd hardly think allowed for any cohesive religious monopole on education.
Then in the 70s of the 19th century, so basically right after unification, Bismark led his so called Culture Wars, in which he not only tried to weaken Socialist movements, but also religious ones. Among other things he successfully pushed for a change of marriage law so to enable purely secular marriages (it's for some reason the only measure I remember).
So I think your temptation has merrit.
 
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