56/70 The schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded with speculative mystics, such as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. These took the place of the severe geometers of the old Museum. The Alexandrian school offers the first example of that system which, in the hands of modern physicists, has led to such wonderful results. It rejected imagination, and made its theories the expression of facts obtained by experiment and observation, aided by mathematical discussion. It enforced the principle that the true method of studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. |