They were all educated at universities though.

Yes, but the point is that universities weren't places of research, but learning/teaching.

It could be that interest in research itself is a relatively recent development. A lot of scholarship amounted to study of past scholarship, until science came along. Empirical science as we know it was barely a century old when Newton came along.

The article doesn't say much about the role of religion in this matter. Surely what one could study was limited by what was allowed by the church.