The Scientific Revolution could not have originated in Egypt’s polytheistic worldview, nor in any society where polytheism predominated, for the same reason it did not arise in China. Both polytheistic traditions and classical Chinese cosmology lacked a metaphysical framework that conceived of the universe as intelligible, orderly, and governed by consistent laws established by a rational Creator[1]
—or, to use Sir Fred Hoyle’s later formulation, by “a super-intellect” that, as he remarked, “has monkeyed with physics, chemistry, and biology.”[2]
A major obstacle in both Chinese and Egyptian conceptions of the universe was their commitment to a cyclical, rather than linear, understanding of time—one that lacked a definitive first moment. If history is understood as endlessly repeating, akin to the recurrence of the four seasons, the very notion of cumulative scientific progress becomes difficult to sustain. Within such a framework, scientific advancement is not easily conceptualized, and cultures that embraced a strictly cyclical model of time were therefore ill-positioned to develop a sustained scientific tradition. For these reasons, scholars such as G. J. Whitrow observed that the Egyptians, whose worldview was structured around a succession of recurring phases, “had very little sense of history or even of past and future.”[3]......
By contrast, polytheistic systems were ill-suited to generate the intellectual conditions necessary for the Scientific Revolution, precisely because—unlike belief in a single, sovereign Creator—their deities were not conceived as grounding a unified, coherent, and orderly cosmos. Polytheistic gods were frequently portrayed as subject to conflict, rivalry, and morally capricious behavior, features that undermined the notion of a stable metaphysical foundation for universal laws of nature.
Christianity, by contrast, begins with the metaphysical affirmation that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This formulation implies that time, space, and matter themselves are contingent realities brought into existence simultaneously, and that the Creator who gives rise to them must therefore transcend them. In philosophical terms, such a being exists outside the spatiotemporal order while remaining causally responsible for it—much as a programmer stands outside the software he creates, sustaining its operation without being contained within it.
In a similar manner, the Gospel of John opens with the declaration, “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” thereby grounding creation itself in rationality, intelligibility, and divine self-expression.[39] The term Logos is laden with philosophical significance, and it is no coincidence that the New Testament was composed in Greek—a language that functioned as a conceptual bridge between Greek philosophical traditions and claims of divine revelation.[40] There is nothing remotely analogous to this conception within polytheistic systems, particularly in ancient Egyptian religion. In Egyptian cosmology, several deities themselves emerge from primordial chaos rather than from an underlying rational order. The god Nun, for example, personifies the pre-cosmic state of chaos and the watery abyss; indeed, his very name denotes the “primeval waters” from which the ordered cosmos was thought to arise.....
....In sum, for the origin of the universe to be rendered intelligible within a rational metaphysical framework, one must posit a being that is timeless, eternal, and supremely powerful. Appeals to primordial chaos or a watery abyss do not resolve the explanatory problem; rather, they exacerbate it by leaving the ultimate source of order unexplained. Classical Greek philosophy addressed this difficulty by articulating the need for a first principle beyond the chain of contingent causes. These philosophical foundations were later synthesized by the early Church Fathers within a Christian theological framework, a synthesis that ultimately contributed to the intellectual conditions under which the Scientific Revolution emerged in Europe..[44]
It is no coincidence that “the leading scientific figures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries overwhelmingly were devout Christians who believed it their duty to comprehend God’s handiwork.”[45] Louis Pasteur, for example, regarded the doctrine of spontaneous generation as a speculative notion lacking empirical support. Through rigorous experimentation, he demonstrated its untenability, yet adherence to the idea persisted among some long after his findings were established. Underlying Pasteur’s scientific work was a metaphysical conviction that life does not arise from non-life. On this view, the existence of the first living organisms necessarily presupposed a creative act attributable to a supremely powerful cause.
