The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century
had its remote antecedents in Greek and early medieval
thought. In the period from the thirteenth to the six-
teenth centuries, this heritage gradually took shape in
a series of methods and ideas that formed the back-
ground for the emergence of modern science. The
methods adumbrated were mainly those of experi-
mentation and mathematical analysis, while the con-
cepts were primarily, though not exclusively, those of
the developing science of mechanics. The history of
their evolution may be divided conveniently on the
basis of centuries: (1) the thirteenth, a period of begin-
nings and reformulation; (2) the fourteenth, a period
of development and culmination; and (3) the fifteenth
and sixteenth, a period of dissemination and transition.
By the onset of the seventeenth century considerable
material was at hand for a new synthesis of methods
and ideas, namely that of classical science.
