From the 8th to the 12th century CE, while Europe suffered the perhaps overdramatically named Dark Ages, science on planet Earth could be found almost ① exclusivelyin the Islamic world. This science was not exactly like our science today, but it was surely antecedent to ② it and was nonetheless an activity aimed at knowing about the world. Muslim rulers granted scientific institutions tremendous resources, such as libraries, observatories, and hospitals. Great schools in all the cities ③ covering the Arabic Near East and Northern Africa (and even into Spain) trained generations of scholars. Almost every word in the modern scientific lexicon that begins with the prefix “al” ④ owes its origins to Islamic science — algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, algebra. And then, just over 400 years after it started, it ground to an apparent halt, and it would be a few hundred years, give or take, before ⑤ that we would today unmistakably recognize as science appeared in Europe — with Galileo, Kepler, and, a bit later, Newton.
* antecedent: 선행하는 ** lexicon: 어휘 (목록) *** give or take: 대략