Excerpt:
If science has a beginning date, it must be 1632 when the Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo Galilei, published his book, Dialogue on the Two Systems of the World [Note 1] All the previous work, all the observations, theory, and fighting against dogmatic concepts were brought together by Galileo.
The Greeks, by and large, had been satisfied to accept the "obvious" facts of nature as starting points for their reasoning. Aristotle was quite content to use reason to argue that the heavier stone would fall faster than the lighter stone because it "wanted" to be in its proper place more than the lighter stone. Given his organic reasoning, it would not have occurred to him to test the "obvious." To the Greeks, experimentation seemed irrelevant. It interfered with and detracted from the beauty of pure deduction. Besides, if an experiment disagreed with a deduction, could one be certain that the experiment was correct? Was it likely that the imperfect world of reality would agree completely with the perfect world of abstract ideas; and if it did not, ought one to adjust the perfect to the demands of the imperfect? To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.