Book excerpt: "Here is a well-known story. Before sometime in the early modern period, Europeans believed that knowledge of nature came solely from reading books, above all those of Aristotle. Then the humanist re-discovery and translation of various ancient philosophical works led the number of "authorities" to grow, and alongside a monolithic "Aristotelianism" emerged any number of "-isms": Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, Skepticism, and so on. Gradually, philosophers realized that they need not need rely on authorities at all, and began to use their own reason, coupled with experience and experiment. Scholasticism and humanism were dead, and the "Age of Reason" had begun, with Descartes as its iconoclastic father (perhaps with a little help from Bacon)"--