Of probably even greater importance, Chinese scholars abandoned the idea of a supreme being with personal and creative properties. No rational Author of Nature existed in their universe; consequently the objects they meticulously described did not follow universal principles, but instead operated within particular rules followed by those entities in the cosmic order. In the absence of a compelling need for the notion of general laws—thoughts in the mind of God, so to speak—little or no search was made for them.
The ionians werent monotheistic but thales ff. sought a universal principle and socrates after him and his student plato and then aristitle who all had great occidental influence. In fact these couldve shaped christian theology; reviewing coplewton's history volume two coukd be of service here.
moreover he explicitly states at the beginning of his medieval ? history that the rediscovery of aristotle's example of systematization caused european theologians to believe a systemtized science could be philosophized
