The shoe definitely is on the other foot now.
Cheers!
I am perfectly well aware of this, thank you.
That doesn't mean those who believed this were right. Once the scientific method was developed, it was in fact quickly shown that they were wrong.
It should be pointed out that metaphysics and the other purely speculative disciplines reached wildly diverse results, not only between different civilizations such as the Middle East, Europe, India and China, but within those civilizations. So which of these results are we to accept as "the truth" and on what basis can we base that conclusion?
Science, otoh, properly done will reach exactly the same conclusions whether the experiment is performed in Palo Alto or Peking.