The natural philosophy that came before the Scientific Revolution was not less creative than modern science, and as practiced by thinkers such as Aristotle was no less methodical and no less concerned with the evidence of the senses. Yet something, it seems, was missing. For that extraordinary something, why the excruciating wait? Why, after philosophy and democracy and mathematics tumbled through the doors of the ancient thinkers’ consciousness in quick succession, did science dawdle on the threshold?
