375 et.seq.The supposed opposition to freedom of opinion in the Laws of Plato, toward the end of his life, can hardly make against the whole spirit of Greek thought.
The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.

The cause of this arrest was twofold: First, there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical science could hardly grow--an atmosphere in which all seeking in Nature for truth as truth was regarded as futile.

The general belief derived from the New Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand; that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest thinkers in the Church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into a science of Nature, and insisted that everything except the saving of souls was folly.
This belief appears frequently through the entire period of the Middle Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly dominant.

From Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century, pouring contempt, as we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to Peter Damian, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be "absurdities" and "fooleries," it becomes a very important element in the atmosphere of thought.( 268) (268) For the view of Peter Damian and others through the Middle Ages as to the futility of scientific investigation, see citations in Eicken, Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, chap.

vi.
Then, too, there was established a standard to which all science which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to conform--a standard which favoured magic rather than science, for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.