idea-process, this Anti-Fate is Science.

Science began with the adventures of free-thinking speculators, who
revolted against religious cosmogonies and superstitions. Sceptics
concerning the knowledge that was the accepted monopoly of the
priesthood must have existed in the oldest civilization we know
anything of, more than twenty-five thousand years ago, the
Aurignacians. But it was to the Greeks that we owe that amalgamation
of curiosity delivered of fear, that merger of systematic research
and critical thinking untrammelled by social inhibitions which is the
essence of modern science. Out of them has come the great Tree of
Knowledge of our time, which is, too, the only Ygdrasil of Life,
undying because it lives upon successive generations of human brain
cells.

Science, as the pursuit of the real, began with very small things by
men with very small intentions. Inventories, collections of isolated
data, something permanent for the mind out of the flux of transient
sensations, little tracks and foot paths in the jungle of phenomena,
were their goal. With no sense of themselves as the mightiest of
master-builders, cultivating humility toward their material at any
rate, the little men ploughed their little fields, striking the oil
of a great generalization or classification or explanation with no
fanfare of trumpets.

First as freaks and cranks, then as scholars and pedants, then
protected and perhaps stimulated under the competitive royal patronage
as societies and academies, they prepared for the harvest. Comparing
them to pioneer farmers sowing an undeveloped territory is really
totally inadequate and inaccurate. For the most part, they were like