Throughout the history, man formed his opinion on the basis of a conjecture. Islam brought this to an end.
What was this conjecture?
Basically, there were two kinds of conjectures about the universe, creation and this world. One was what we know as "Shirk" (polytheism) and second was what we know as philosophy. Both of these ideas rested on the ground of conjecture - polytheism and philosophy
Polytheistic belief was that there are several deities who are managing the working of this world. In other words, sun is a deity, moon is a deity, stars are deities and mountains and seas are also deities. So the concept of many deities gave rise to polytheism
The claim of philosophy was that it is a rational discipline but it was also based on conjecture. Why? Almost all philosophers believed in monistic concept, which Hegel referred to as the "World Spirit"
In other words, there is a spirit, an unseen power and the entire universe is a manifestation of this power.
In other words, universe is not separate in itself and is a manifestation of this world spirit. These two concepts have been there in history and both are based on guesswork. Neither is the world run by several deities  nor is it that this universe and all of us are a manifestation of a world spirit or an idea. 
Both these ideas were incorrect.  According to the Quran, "They have no knowledge of that. They are only conjecturing." (43:20) That is, they do not know anything about the creation, the world, and the universe - their understanding is based on guesswork.
What did this lead to? Polytheism led to the idea that there were many gods. And monism eliminated the concept of a personal God and gave the notion of a world spirit instead. 
This did not lead to any progress in the field of exploration of universe because both had given a divine status to the universe and therefore no work was being done to explore and discover it. 
That is, one believed in sun and moon being the god and another believed that everyone is god and everyone is a manifestation of it. 
Islam gave this concept that both of these conjectures are incorrect. Creator is separate from the creation. Creator created all the beings. 
This brought about a new concept in the world, which the world was previously unaware of.