Sir Francis Bacon put forward the first theory of the scientific method.

Modern science can reasonably be said to have come into being during the time of Queen Elizabeth I of England. While William Shakespeare was composing sonnets, in Italy Galileo Galilei was developing the idea that careful experiments in a laboratory could reveal universal truths about the way objects move through space. Later, hearing about the newly invented telescope, he made one for himself and with it made discoveries that astonished and thrilled all of Europe. Nevertheless, in 1633, Galileo was put on trial for his scientific teachings.

Another great scientist of the day, William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, worked not only at the same time as Galileo, but even at the same place — the University of Padua. Touring the old university campus at the heart of the city, one is shown Galileo's cattedra, the wooden pulpit from which he lectured, and, curiously, one of his vertebrae in a display case just outside the rector's office (maybe the rector needs to be reminded to have a little spine). You can also see the lecture theatre in which Harvey dissected cadavers, while eager students peered down from tiers of balconies. Such dissections were illegal in Harvey's time, so the floor of the theatre was equipped with a mechanism to make the body disappear when a lookout gave the signal that the authorities were coming.

Another important player in the same era was not a scientist at all, but a lawyer who rose to be Lord Chancellor of England in the reign of King James I, Elizabeth's successor. His name was Sir Francis Bacon, and in his magnum opus, Novum Organum, he put forward the first theory of the scientific method. In Bacon's view, the scientist should be a disinterested observer of nature, collecting observations with a mind cleansed of harmful preconceptions that might cause error to creep into the scientific record. Once enough such observations have been gathered, patterns will emerge, giving rise to truths about nature.

But even in Bacon's time there were those who knew better. “That's exactly how a Lord Chancellor would do science”, William Harvey is said to have grumbled.