From Mysticism to Empiricism: The Evolution of Pre-Science to Science

Long before laboratories, telescopes, or peer-reviewed journals existed, humans were already trying to make sense of the world around them. Thunder needed an explanation. The rising and setting of the sun demanded a story. Disease, drought, and death all called for meaning. And the earliest answers humanity produced were not scientific – they were mythological, spiritual, and deeply tied to the worship of nature itself. The journey from those early mystical explanations to the rigorous, evidence-based methods we call science today is one of the most important intellectual transformations in human history.

When nature was divine: the age of mythological explanation 🔗

For early humans, the natural world was not a collection of impersonal forces governed by predictable laws. It was alive, powerful, and sacred. Every river, mountain, storm, and celestial body was believed to be controlled by – or identical with – a divine being. This is what scholars broadly refer to as nature worship, a pattern of belief found across virtually every ancient civilization on Earth.

In ancient Greece, Poseidon governed the seas, Demeter controlled the harvest, and Zeus wielded lightning. In Hindu tradition, Agni was the god of fire, Indra the deity of rain and storms, and Vayu the god of wind. Norse communities attributed thunder to Thor’s hammer, while Egyptian religion centred on Ra, the sun god, as a cosmic creator. Across cultures, the forces of nature were not merely observed – they were personified, worshipped, and appeased through elaborate rituals, offerings, and festivals.

This mythological framework served a critical purpose. It gave communities a shared narrative to explain phenomena that were otherwise terrifying and unpredictable. Why did the river flood? Because the gods were angry. Why did crops fail? Because a deity had been disrespected. These stories offered psychological comfort, social cohesion, and a moral structure that bound people together around common beliefs.

Myth as the earliest knowledge system 🔗

It is important not to dismiss mythological thinking as mere superstition. These narratives functioned as early knowledge systems. As scholars have noted, the goals of myth and science are surprisingly similar – both attempt to bring order and understanding to the phenomena of the natural world. The difference lies in the approach: where myth personifies and narrates, science measures and tests.

Ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, for instance, tracked celestial movements with remarkable precision. The Babylonians developed sophisticated mathematical methods to describe astronomical patterns, even though they lacked underlying rational theories to explain why these patterns existed. The Edwin Smith papyrus from ancient Egypt (c. 1600 BCE) applied examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis to medical cases – an approach with striking parallels to empirical investigation. Agricultural societies timed their planting and harvesting based on myths tied to celestial cycles, ensuring survival through a fusion of storytelling and practical observation.

So while myth and early religion dominated the explanatory landscape, the seeds of systematic thinking were already present within these traditions.

The Greek breakthrough: from mythos to logos 🔗

The most decisive early shift from mythological to scientific thinking occurred in ancient Greece, beginning around the 6th century BCE. Scholars refer to this transformation as the move “from mythos to logos” – from traditional narratives to reasoned inquiry. It remains one of the most significant intellectual transitions in recorded history.

The key figures in this shift were the Milesian philosophers – Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes – who lived in the city of Miletus on the coast of modern-day Turkey. What made them revolutionary was not their specific conclusions (many of which turned out to be wrong) but their method. Instead of attributing natural phenomena to the will of the gods, they sought natural causes. Thales proposed that water was the fundamental substance underlying all matter. Anaximander suggested an indefinite primordial substance he called the apeiron. Anaximenes argued that air, through processes of condensation and rarefaction, could account for the diversity of the physical world.

None of these theories survived long in their original form. But the underlying principle – that natural phenomena should be explained through natural causes rather than divine intervention – was groundbreaking. It laid the conceptual groundwork for all subsequent scientific inquiry.

Resistance and controversy 🔗

This transition was far from smooth. Philosophers who offered natural explanations for phenomena traditionally attributed to the gods frequently faced hostility. Anaxagoras, for example, proposed that the sun was not a divine being but a massive fiery rock – an idea that led to accusations of impiety. Many people resisted these new ideas because they diminished the role of divine agency, reducing the sacred to the merely physical.

This tension between religious authority and rational inquiry would recur throughout the history of science, from Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic Church to modern debates about evolution and cosmology.

The bridge: medieval and Islamic contributions 🔗

The Greek philosophical tradition did not lead directly to modern science. After the decline of the classical world, much of this knowledge was preserved, refined, and extended by scholars in the Islamic Golden Age (roughly the 8th to 13th centuries CE). Thinkers such as Ibn al-Haytham made foundational contributions to optics and experimental methodology. Al-Biruni advanced observational astronomy and cross-cultural scientific comparison. These scholars did not merely preserve Greek texts – they critically engaged with them, corrected errors, and developed more rigorous standards of evidence and experimentation.

During the European Middle Ages, Aristotelian philosophy was reintegrated into Western thought, particularly through the work of Thomas Aquinas, who synthesised Aristotle’s emphasis on sensory experience with Christian theology. Roger Bacon, a 13th-century English friar, championed the importance of experimentation, even though he did not conduct experiments himself. These developments set the stage for the dramatic changes that would come with the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.

The Scientific Revolution: empiricism takes centre stage 🔗

The period from roughly 1543 to 1687 – commonly known as the Scientific Revolution – represents the definitive break between the old mythological-philosophical worldview and the modern scientific one. During this era, systematic experimentation replaced philosophical speculation as the primary method of gaining knowledge about the natural world.

The revolution began with Nicolaus Copernicus, whose 1543 work proposed that the Earth orbited the Sun rather than sitting at the centre of the universe. This heliocentric model directly contradicted centuries of religious and Aristotelian teaching. Johannes Kepler later refined this model with his laws of planetary motion, and Galileo Galilei provided observational evidence through his telescopic discoveries – including the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter.

Francis Bacon and the birth of the scientific method 🔗

Perhaps the most philosophically significant figure in this transformation was Francis Bacon, often called the father of empiricism. In his 1620 work Novum Organum, Bacon outlined a new approach to knowledge that prioritised inductive reasoning and systematic observation over the deductive methods inherited from Aristotle. He argued that genuine knowledge must come from careful, unbiased observation of the natural world, followed by controlled experimentation.

Bacon believed that this reformed method would not only advance understanding but also improve human life – that science should serve practical, humanitarian ends. His insistence on a planned procedure for investigating nature marked a decisive break from the older tradition of relying on the authority of ancient texts and philosophical argument.

Descartes, Newton, and the consolidation of science 🔗

While Bacon championed empiricism, René Descartes approached the problem from the opposite direction, emphasising rationalism and mathematical proof. Descartes argued that certain truths could be reached through reason alone, independent of sensory experience. This tension between empiricism and rationalism was ultimately productive, pushing both traditions to refine their methods.

The figure who most successfully synthesised these approaches was Isaac Newton. His Principia (1687) formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation using a combination of mathematical reasoning and observational evidence. Newton’s work demonstrated that the same physical laws governing a falling apple also governed planetary orbits – an insight that unified terrestrial and celestial physics for the first time. He effectively settled the debate in favour of an evidence-based, mathematically rigorous approach to understanding nature.

Why did this transition happen? 🔗

Several factors converged to make the shift from pre-science to science possible. No single cause explains the transformation – it was the result of multiple reinforcing developments over centuries.

Technological advancement played a crucial role. The invention of instruments like the telescope, microscope, barometer, and mechanical calculator gave scientists the ability to observe and measure phenomena that were previously invisible or unmeasurable. The printing press, developed in the 15th century, allowed ideas to spread rapidly across Europe, enabling collaboration and debate on an unprecedented scale.

Cross-cultural exchange was equally important. Greek philosophy, preserved and expanded by Islamic scholars, re-entered Europe through Latin translations during the 12th-century Renaissance. This created a rich intellectual foundation that European thinkers could build upon – or challenge.

Institutional support provided legitimacy and structure. The founding of organisations like the British Royal Society (1660) created formal venues for presenting and publishing scientific work, transforming science from an individual pursuit into a collective, self-correcting enterprise.

Philosophical shifts in how people thought about knowledge itself were perhaps most fundamental. The growing conviction that truth should be established through evidence and reason rather than through appeals to authority or sacred texts was a prerequisite for everything else.

What was lost and what was gained 🔗

The transition from mythological to scientific explanation was not a simple story of ignorance giving way to enlightenment. Mythological frameworks provided meaning, moral orientation, and communal identity in ways that scientific explanations often do not. Science can tell us how a thunderstorm forms; it does not tell us what a thunderstorm means. This is why, even today, mythological and religious worldviews coexist alongside scientific ones for billions of people around the world.

What science gained, however, was a method – a self-correcting process of hypothesis, testing, and revision that allows knowledge to accumulate and improve over time. Unlike mythological narratives, which tend to be treated as fixed and sacred, scientific theories are designed to be challenged, refined, and sometimes discarded entirely when better evidence emerges. This willingness to revise is arguably the defining feature that separates science from all prior ways of understanding the natural world.

By the 18th century, during the Age of Enlightenment, scientific authority had begun to displace religious authority in many areas of public life. Disciplines like alchemy and astrology, once considered legitimate fields of knowledge, lost their credibility. Empiricism and rational thought became the dominant intellectual values, and the ideal of progress – the belief that human understanding could steadily improve – became central to Western culture.

The journey continues 🔗

The shift from pre-science to science was not a single event but a long, uneven, and often contentious process spanning thousands of years. It involved contributions from Babylonian astronomers, Egyptian physicians, Greek philosophers, Islamic scholars, and European experimentalists. It required not just new ideas but new tools, new institutions, and new ways of thinking about what counts as knowledge.

Understanding this journey matters because it reminds us that science is not a set of fixed facts handed down from on high. It is a human activity – shaped by culture, technology, and historical circumstance – that emerged gradually from the same impulse to explain the world that once produced myths about thunder gods and river spirits.

What do you think? If mythological and scientific worldviews both attempt to explain the same natural phenomena, what makes one more reliable than the other – and is reliability the only thing that matters when we seek to understand the world?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nature-worship
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
3. https://greekreporter.com/2026/03/20/transition-myth-scientific-thought-ancient-greece/
4. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-scientific-revolution/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution
6. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Mizzou_Academy/World_History_A_B/11:_Power_of_Ideas/11.05:_Scientific_Revolution
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method