THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN SCIENCE 91 



1450-1500 Beginnings, in Italy, of the constructive period of the 



scientific Renaissance. 

 1500-1600 Rapid accumulation of facts and development of 



rationalistic explanations of natural phenomena. 

 1600-1700 Dawning concept of the rational explanation of all 



natural phenomena. 



Not only were the broader facts of modern science made 

 apparent by the workers of the Renaissance, but also the 

 significance of science began to be appreciated in its relation 

 to civilized life. What Roger Bacon had foreseen with 

 prophetic vision, and what was beyond the comprehension 

 of his contemporaries, his more superficial namesake, 

 Francis Bacon (1561-1626), helped to establish hi the 

 popular imagination. While the latter was given too high a 

 position, when he was called the father of the inductive sciences, 

 he undoubtedly deserves the credit of giving publicity to the 

 failure of the deductive scholastic reasoning and of having 

 formulated, in such a manner as to secure its general accept- 

 ance, the claim that the scientific method possesses unbe- 

 lievable possibilities. During the seventeenth century men 

 began to be persuaded that there must be natural solutions 

 to problems, although they were unable to discover them. 

 And the fact that this attitude of mind has become almost 

 an obsession in modern times illustrates better than almost 

 anything else how far we have departed from the super- 

 naturalism of the Middle Ages. 



The Renaissance, taken as a whole, marks the intellectual 

 awakening of the western world. If we have seemed to in- 

 clude too much under the head of Science in the Renais- 

 sance, it is not because we would claim all for science but 

 because the manifestations of science are everywhere present. 

 The Renaissance in its broadest meaning marks the begin- 

 ning of modern culture. It was not alone the revival of the 

 old it was also a creation of the new, first by the Italian 

 people and later by the other western nations. The Protes- 

 tant Reformation and the English and French Revolutions 



