Alistair Cameron Crombie

“By this lux as the first corporeal form Grosseteste did not, of course, mean simply visible light. As an emanation or propagation of substance and power lux was the basis of all bodily magnitude and of all natural operations, of which the manifestation of visible light was only one. One of the most important functions of lux was to be the intermediary between spirit and matter. It was the instrument by which God produced the macrocosm of the universe, and the instrument by which the soul made contact with the physical body and the things of sense in the microcosm of man.”

“The strategic act by which Grosseteste and his thirteenth- and fourteenth-century successors created modern experimental science was to unite the experimental habit of the practical arts with the rationalism of twelfth-century philosophy.”

“Grosseteste's contribution was to emphasize the importance of falsification in the search for true causes and to develop the method of verification and falsification into a systematic method of experimental procedure.”

“Newton achieved the clearest appreciation of the relation between the empirical elements in a scientific system and the hypothetical elements derived from a philosophy of nature.”

“Nicolaus Copernicus is the supreme example of a man who revolutionized science by looking at the old facts in a new way.”