George Henry Lewes on History of science

“The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.”

“He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle, is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.”

“Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind,—rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena,—endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection.”

“Although modern Science includes ideas not less transcendental than those included in ancient Science... As abstract expressions of the observed order of nature they are liable at any moment to be displaced in favour of expressions more accurate. They serve as guides and starting-points in research. They are not believed in as absolute existences. In ancient science they were held to be absolute existences, which it was the primary object of research to find, and which, when disclosed to the imagination, required no confrontation with reality.”