As Islam and Christianity began to struggle against one another and the nations of Europe began to form, even more resources could be devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. The knowledge saved during the Caliphate was passed on.
Many philosophers, along with artists and writers, found patronage in members of royal families. Some of these patrons were genuinely interested in the natural world, but the ability to provide such patronage was a display of wealth, privilege, and power.
The biggest advancement made at the this time was the development of the scientific method, the rigorous and structured study of nature. Prior to this, most scientific discoveries had been made through intuition or anecdotal observation. Unfortunately, this new method clashed with many of the assertions made by the ancient authorities on natural philosophy. Aristotle's viewpoint was considered to be the absolute truth by the nascent Catholic Church. The Sun circled the Earth etched in an invisible sphere, and to say otherwise was heresy.
One major figure stands out among all others during this time. Galileo Galilei changed the study of physics dramatically. In a famous experiment, Galileo dropped two different weights at the same time from the top of a tower. The conventional wisdom was that lighter objects fall more slowly than heavier objects. No one had actually bothered to find out for sure. Galileo challenged this assumption and measured the results, finding course that the weight of an object was not a factor in how quickly an object fell. Now known as the "father of science", he favored observation, measurement, and mathematics, over assumption, logic, and conventional authority. He thus separated science from philosophy and religion.
Galileo also came to support the work of another scientific revolutionary. Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who developed the heliocentric model of the solar system. Copernicus observed the movements of the planets, and discovered that Earth was one of the planets, all of which orbited the Sun. This clearly meant that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and Church doctrine had to be wrong. Galileo himself is famous for discovering the Galilean moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - demonstrating that other planets were the center of their own systems, and further diminishing Church authority. For his support of heliocentrism, Galileo ended his life under house arrest for heresy.
