Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

of Miletus, alive at the date 600 B.C., to the present day. Roughly
speaking, it is a history of about twenty-five hundred years. Of course
there were anticipations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. But
modern science, urged onward by the curiosity of the human spirit,
permeated with criticism, and divorced from hereditary superstitions,
had its birth with Greeks; and among the Greeks Thales was the earliest
exponent known to us
In this general characterization science and philosophy are not
discriminated. But the word ‘curiosity’ somewhat trivializes that inward
motive which has driven men. In the greater sense, in which it is here
used, ‘curiosity’ means the craving of reason that the facts discriminated
in experience be understood. It means the refusal to be satisfied with
the bare welter of fact, or even with the bare habit of routine. The first
step in science and philosophy has been made when it is grasped that
every routine exemplifies a principle which is capable of statement in
abstraction from its particular exemplifications. We are American, or
French, or English; and we love our modes of life, with their beauties and
their tendernesses. But curiosity drives us to an attempt to define
civilization; and in this generalization we soon find that we have lost our
beloved America, our beloved France, and our beloved England. The
generality stands with a cold impartiality, where our affections cling to
one or the other of the particulars.