MODERN SCIENCE 13 



0f papyrus, the works of our first scientific thinker, 

 v Roger Bacon, lie here at hand, unedited, forgotten, 

 neglected. 



Yet despite this neglect, certain facts concerning the 

 beginnings of Modern Science have been ascertained 

 and are sure and firm. Firstly, Modern Science did not \ 

 arise. .aS-.-.an offspring of Philosophy, nor until it had 

 gained some strength of its own did it form any alliance 

 therewith. Formal Philosophy, unknown apart from 

 Theology in the Middle Ages, played a subordinate 

 part in the Revival of Letters, nor were the earlier 

 Renaissance philosophers at all in line with scientific 

 discovery. Secondly, the Revival of Science was not-jk 

 directly related to_ the revived knowledge of Greek. 

 The Greek scholars of the Renaissance showed no 

 more sympathy with scientific investigation than was 

 exhibited by their colleagues the philosophers, and the 

 early frupianistir,.. period was, on the whole, backward 

 andjsven retQgrp-^iygj_n its scientific conceptions. 



Greek Science, we have seen, was from its birth in- 



\ . ' L__ .. 



extncablyjnterwoyen wjthj^hjlosoph y. Modern Science 



^ has in fact passed through its earlier stages of develop- 



( ment without this relationship and in a very different 



1 environment from that of Greek Science. Limited on 



every side, forbidden the field of free speculation, cut 



off from the departments held to be the peculiar domain 



of the mediaeval ecclesiastic, lawyer or statesman, 



Science in its early stages applied itself almost ex- / 



clusively to the solution of so-called practical problems.*' 



The mariner availed himself of the compass without 



holding any theory of terrestrial magnetism. He boldly 



put to sea with charts to aid him that had been prepared 



by mapmakers as innocent as he was himself of the 



Ptolemaic or of any other system of spherical projection. 



