It wasn't until the birth of Christianity and the change in society that it brought about that people started approaching the way the world works differently.
Christianity was a stark contrast to these rampant pagan religions. It was much more structured than any of the polytheistic religions and provided explanations of life and its creation. Another vast difference between paganism and Christianity was the relationship between God and his people. In pagan religions their gods and goddesses were thought of as beings that were superior to humans. In Christianity, God is still superior, but man was made in the image of God, which enabled Christian followers to relate to God in a way that was not achievable with polytheistic gods. Another huge contrast was the explanation of a heaven and hell. Polytheistic religions do not speak of an afterlife that you strive to get to such as heaven, or that you strive to escape such as hell. Most pagan religions had only one destination for souls to arrive at, such as Hades in Greek religion, and not two separate destinations. .
All of these dissimilarities started to effect societies and cause them to become more structural. They also caused people to try and become as close to God as they could and one way of achieving this would be to learn about the world that he created. This was a major strive for many early Christians. From these early curious Christians came different philosophies of life. "Early Christians also rejected belief in cyclical time, the conviction that history replays itself in great, ineluctably recurring phases" (Carroll/Shiflett, p.60). These knew philosophies set up a future of inventions for Christianity, not conflicts with science. .
The Middle Ages and Christianity.
During the middle ages many monasteries were in existence within European societies and the clergymen that dwelled within these monasteries were very learned men.