Mr. F,

I concur with your statement for the most part.

Of course religious institutions of a society get in the way of pure scientific advancement, especially in areas that contradict the doctrines of the churchmen of a particular society. Furthermore pure scientific advancement happens when the clergy are weakened socially and or politically. For example contrasting Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian culture. Ancient Greece was a large number of independent states, if the clergy didn't like what a person was saying in one city, that person could always move to another city who's rulers didn't care. Ancient Egypt was one country, and if someone crossed the Egyptian clergy, they were pretty much ostracized.

Advancements in technology do not usually have this handicap directly (but indirectly however they are hampered by a lack of advancement in pure science.) The High Middle Ages in Western culture was an age of technological advancement over the Dark Ages, but also an age with a strong clergy, and scientific stagnation. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment were ages where churchmen lost power, (to monarchs, to other churchmen, and to the people) but they were also ages of scientific advancement.

My point, overstated perhaps in some respects, is that the mix of memes in the minds of the intellectual classes led to novel approaches to knowledge, both unintentionally and intentionally. I tried to broach this idea by touching on institutional conflicts.

Remember Matthew Arnold? He stated that "At the bottom of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man, for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the universal order...The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience." (Chapter 4 of Culture and Anarchy, 1867-68). This is the gist of my view.