Aristotle’s teleological views held up, largely unchallenged, for almost two millennia. But then, in the sixteenth century, somewhere on the outskirts of the Eurasian landmass, the work of a small circle of scholars sparked the modern scientific revolution. Copernicus, Descartes, Bacon, Galileo, and their contemporaries stressed that our senses can betray us. They embraced the Latin dictum Ignoramus, literally, “We do not know.”
