In fairness, most of the progress the article is talking about happened in the High or Late Middle Ages. The period from 800 to 1200 was considerably less fecund, so the "myth" isn't entirely false: the early Middle Ages were pretty barren, scientifically speaking.
That said, one of the (many) things that makes us tend to underplay the scientific progress made even in the Late Middle Ages was the disconnect between science and technology. In modern science, from Newton's time onward, the two have been closely coupled (with technology leading the way to new science as often as the other way around).
In the Middle Ages, technology developed more-or-less independently of science, often with quite astonishing results. An excellent book on the subject if Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine", although the solemn declaration of the end of Western technological power makes the preface pretty hilarious reading, 35 years on: http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Machine-Industrial-Revolution...
That said, one of the (many) things that makes us tend to underplay the scientific progress made even in the Late Middle Ages was the disconnect between science and technology. In modern science, from Newton's time onward, the two have been closely coupled (with technology leading the way to new science as often as the other way around).
In the Middle Ages, technology developed more-or-less independently of science, often with quite astonishing results. An excellent book on the subject if Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine", although the solemn declaration of the end of Western technological power makes the preface pretty hilarious reading, 35 years on: http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Machine-Industrial-Revolution...