Number of words: 151

This way of basing all theories firmly on experiment is known as the scientific method and we shall see that it has its counterpart in Eastern philosophy. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, was fundamentally different in that respect. Although Greek philosophers had extremely ingenious ideas about nature which often come very close to modern scientific models, the enormous difference between the two is the empirical attitude of modern science which was by and large foreign to the Creek mind. The Greeks obtained their models deductively from some fundamental axiom or principle and not inductively from what had been observed. On the other hand, of course, the Greek art of deductive reasoning and logic is an essential ingredient in the second stage of scientific research, the formulation of a consistent mathematical model, and thus an essential part of science.

Excerpted from Page 31 of ‘The Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra