Modern science was born in the period beginning with Copernicus's work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) and ending with Newton's Philosophia Naturalis Philosophiae Mathematica.

For reasons not to be entered into here, mediaeval scholasticism had not succeeded in finding an effective method for the investigation of natural phenomena. And Humanism, though indirectly instrumental in the creation of natural science through the promotion of knowledge of Greek works on mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy, had not been able to find the new paths that science would have to follow. The conviction shared by the two movements, viz. that science was something which mankind had once possessed, but had since lost, turned men's eyes towards the past instead of to the future — to ancient books instead of to new investigations and experiments.

The creation of modern science required a different philosophy. Man had to realize that if science is to grow, each generation must make its own contribution; and that the accumulated wisdom of antiquity is useful only as a starting-point for new research. | p. 1; Lead paragraph