[Old North State]

One could make the case that modern science is, in some sense, the bastard child of Christianity, if you consider science as the descendant of what used to be called Natural Philosophy. The scientific method, hence science, fell out of Natural Philosophy during the renaissance when Greek and Latin writings concerning the ancient Hermetic Arts reached European scholars(mostly churchmen) from the middle east. They presented an alternate to Holy Scripture; one that described the Universe in terms of knowledge and that could be tested by experiment and observation instead of faith. The goal was to understand what Newton called the 'ultimate frames of nature' using the methods laid down by Francis Bacon and others. Their goal, the Philosophers Stone, was a chimera, but the methods set the stage for what came after.

[Jeff Chandler]

Hermeticism had only a peripheral contribution to the development of the scientific method. Considering the frequently accidental nature of scientific progress, it wouldn’t be surprising if it had a greater role, but it didn’t.