CH. ix, SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 61 



CHAPTER IX. 



SCIENCE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



Rise of Modern Science Dogmatism of the Middle Ages Copernicus 

 Copernican Theory of the Universe Vesalius on Anatomy Fal- 

 lopius and Eustachius, Anatomists Gesner the Naturalist Csesal- 

 pinus the Botanist Chemistry of Paracelsus and Van Helmont. 



WE have now arrived at the beginning of Modern Science, 

 when the foundations were laid of that knowledge which we 

 possess to-day. With the exception of some original dis- 

 coveries made by the Arabs, learned men during the Dark 

 Ages had spent their time almost entirely in translating and 

 repeating what the Greeks had taught ; till at last they had 

 come to believe that Ptolemy, Galen, and Aristotle had 

 settled most of the scientific questions, and that no one had 

 any right to doubt their decisions. But as Europe became 

 more civilised, and .people had time to devote their lives to 

 quiet occupations, first one observer and then another began 

 to see that many grand truths were still undiscovered, and 

 that, though the Greeks had learned much about nature, yet 

 their greatest men had only made the best theories they 

 could from the facts they knew, and had never intended that 

 their teaching should be considered as complete or final. 



And so little by little real observations and experiments 

 began to take the place of mere book-learning, and as soon 

 as this happened science began to advance rapidly so 

 rapidly that from this time forward we can only pick out the 



