Traditionally science is seen as a break away from scholastic dogmatism during the 17th and 18th centuries in what is called the Enlightenment period. Underpinning the shift was a growing belief in evidence-based empiricism, promoted by Bacon and Descartes rather than the interpretation of ancient texts, be they philosophical, religious, or historical.
Both scholastic philosophy and science value reason and both use logic as a fundamental tool, but science uses measurement and mathematics as a modelling strategy. This enables new insights and theories to evolve in unpredictable ways.
One of the most important consequences of scientific methods is the rate of change they promote. Within a few hundred years, human understanding has resulted in new models of how the universe came to be, how life evolved and the dynamics of the Earth’s operating system, especially climate. New technologies for transportation, communication, food production and medicine have resulted in huge increases in human populations and life expectancy.
The downside of these changes is that the benefits of these technologies have been uneven, creating huge advantages for early adopters and leaving others behind often to be exploited by those who have. Those who have not have long been exploited as slaves, colonial dependencies and underpaid workers, but what technologies do is enable exploitation at an unprecedented scale.
