Let us start at the beginning of Western science, something due to the Mesopotamians (living where we now find Iraq) and the Egyptians (Lindberg 1992). They both had various creation myths, usually involving gods and the moving of waters and land, with the sun and the moon having special significance. Not much distinction was drawn between what we would think of as scientific, causal understanding and what we would think of as magic. Often, contemporary social arrangements – like the status of priests and kings – were mixed up with all of this, and were traced back to happenings at the time of original creation. One thing of major importance was the development of writing, beginning with Egyptian hieroglyphics (picture symbols) about 3000 bce and culminating in the Greek written language beginning about 800 bce. Mathematics was important in both cultures. Starting around 3000 bce, the Egyptians developed a decimal-based system, and from there went on to develop a very practically oriented mathematics – good for surveying and building and the like. It was not crude – they had rules, for instance, to work out the value of π – but it did not in any way compare to the sophistication of the Babylonian mathematics, which was, as is well known, sexagesimal (based on 60, thus giving the legacy of our ways of measuring time and angle) as well as decimal.