The second great tool of scientific work made its appearance beside this discovery of the Hellenic mind during the renaissance period – rational experiment as a means of reliably controlling experience. Without which today’s empirical science would be impossible. Experiments had been conducted early; for instance, in India physiological in connection with the ascetic techniques of the yogi; in Hellenic antiquity mathematical experiments for military purposes, and in the Middle Ages for the purpose of mining. But it was the achievement of the Renaissance to have made the experiment the principle of research as such. In fact the pioneers were the great innovators in the field of art – Leonardo and men like that. Above all the musical experimenters of the sixteenth century with their experimental Keyboards were characteristic. From these circles, the experiment entered science, especially through Galileo, and it entered Theory Bacon. And then the various exact disciplines took it over in the continental universities, in the first instance those in Italy and the Netherlands.
Now what did science mean to these men who stood at the threshold of modernity. To the artistic experimenters like Leonardo and to the musical innovators it meant the road to true art, which meant for them the road to true nature. Art should be raised to the rank of a science, and that meant above all that the artist should be raised to the rank of the doctor (of philosophy) both in social terms and in terms of the