Well, all that must have been known from time immemorial--at
least for 4,000 or 5,000 years before the commencement of our
era--because we know that for as great a period as that the Egyptians,
at any rate, whatever may have been the case with other people, were in
the enjoyment of a highly developed civilisation. But of what
knowledge they may have possessed beyond this we know nothing; and in
tracing back the springs of the origin of everything that we call
"modern science" (which is not merely knowing, but knowing
systematically, and with the intention and endeavour to find out the
causal connection of things)--I say that when we trace back the
different lines of all the modern sciences we come at length to one
epoch and to one country--the epoch being about the fourth and fifth
centuries before Christ, and the country being ancient Greece. It is
there that we find the commencement and the root of every branch of
physical science and of scientific method. If we go back to that time
we have in the works attributed to Aristotle, who flourished between
300 and 400 years before Christ, a sort of encyclopaedia of the
scientific knowledge of that day--and a very marvellous collection of,
in many respects, accurate and precise knowledge it is.
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