Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/34

18 However prone they might be to speculation, they had no inclination to experiment or to engage in the patient accumulation of the knowledge of physical facts. “You Greeks,” says Plato in one of his Dialogues, “are ever children, having no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge!” The influence of a spurious Aristotelianism, which lasted through many centuries and even beyond the time of Boyle, was wholly opposed to the true methods of science, and it was only when philosophy had shaken itself free from scholasticism that chemistry, as a science, was able to develop.