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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL
It is a commonly-held opinion that the modern world
began with the seventeenth century. "Modern" here is
almost synonymous with "scientific", implying the start of
an era in which knowledge meant, simply speaking, those
facts which could be reproduced and demonstrated.
During the sixteenth century a large segment of
the European population, including the British, became
less dominated by the religious authority of mediaeval
times and increasingly influenced by the results of
scientific investigation. It did not follow that
scientific thinking was always at odds with religious
faith. Some learned men in every age have harmoniously
combined the two. Roger Bacon, the thirteenth century
Franciscan, included mathematics and science within his
broad love of knowledge and in these disciplines at least,
replaced argument with experiment. He, however, was a man
ahead of his time.
There were more of his temper two centuries later,
when men started to turn back from the theories - usually
non·verifiable - of mediaeval "scientists" to the earlier
writings of the Greeks and Romans, gradually using the more