ABSTRACT
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century. The Italian Renaissance, though not medieval, is not modern; it is more akin to the best age of Greece. The sixteenth century, with its absorption in theology, is more medieval than the world of Machiavelli. The new conceptions that science introduced profoundly influenced modern philosophy. Descartes, who was in a sense the founder of modern philosophy, was himself one of the creators of seventeenth-century science. Something must be said about the methods and results of astronomy and physics before the mental atmosphere of the time in which modern philosophy began can be understood. The men who founded modern science had two merits which are not necessarily found together: immense patience in observation, and great boldness in framing hypotheses.
