ABSTRACT
Modern science developed from ancient science.After centuries when the authority of a few ancient authors-Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen-was such that study of the natural sciences was more an effort to understand their meaning than to judge their accuracy, scientists of the Renaissance and after began testing their theories, often against other ancient theories that had not been canonized.The results are well known: Ptolemy’s geocentric universe is held today to be false, and Aristotle’s four elements and Galen’s four humors not only false but almost meaningless. Science has progressed in new directions, and even those ancient authors whose ideas prevailed have been left behind: if we possessed all the works of Democritus, nobody would turn to them to learn atomic science.
