Why were more scientific advancements made during the Renaissance than the Middle ages?

Answer 1

I really don't believe there were more scientific advances during the Renaissance than during the Middle Ages.

To check this impression, I looked at the lists of technologies of the two periods in Wikipedia. The inventions listed as being of the Middle Ages seem more important and certainly far outnumber those of the Renaissance.

There are links below to the articles I consulted for this.

I should note that most historians have the Middle Ages and Renaissance overlap to some degree, so the printing press and the blast furnace are claimed by both.

I think there is an issue of perception here. The Church never objected much to scientific advancements of the Middle Ages, so we have no special reason to remember them. There was no special theological problem with the invention of the horse collar or stirrups, and the wheel barrow could hardly have been considered a threat to the Church. Gunpowder and cannons were new, as were combined arms tactics and massed archers, but the Church was more or less neutral on weapons. Clocks and wine presses were of little interest to popes. And the introduction of chimneys and fireplaces, on the one hand, and spectacles, on the other, could only have been welcomed by old men of the Church.

The problem that arose during the Renaissance was one of advances such as those in astronomy, which says something about cosmology, and this, in turn is an object of focus of attention. If there are moons around Jupiter, then there might be life, souls, on Jupiter, requiring their own encounter with God and Saviour. This meant that the Catholic Church might not be actually the only true universal religion. A heresy could be hushed up, as many were during the Middle Ages, but the printing press had come along, so the leaders of the Church felt a need to act quickly in a way they had not needed to do before.

Also, the writers in of the Renaissance regarded themselves as superior to those of the Middle Ages, who were unable to defend themselves in a debate that started after they had died. Our historians have tended to buy the Renaissance point of view uncritically, from time to time.