That great leap forward was made in the exhilarating period between the years 1600 and 1700, during which empirical inquiry evolved from the freewheeling, speculative frenzy of old into something with powers of discovery on a wholly new level—the knowledge machine. Driving this machine was a regimented process that subjected theories to a pitiless interrogation by observable evidence, raising up some and tearing down others, occasionally changing course or traveling in reverse but making in the long term unmistakable progress.
