The Ascent of Man and Science

The Ascent of Man discusses the coming into being of the scientific way of thinking. What calls for our attention is not so much the great scientific discoveries, but the analytical and deductive tool of reasoning that lies behind them, and the relation of this tool to the religious precepts of Man. It is not the application of science that concerns us, but the application of thought. The first one to put science on a foundation was Plato. Well, that’s what is commonly thought, but actually it was Thales together with his pupil Anaximander. Isaac Newton marks the emergence of the scientific spirit as it is known today and at the same time ‘he was the last of the magicians’, a term used by Keynes. And therefore our essay ends there.