"Science" is a specific way of doing research. The scientific method was invented in late 18th century and since then science is what what we think of as "science". Before that, research was done by a different method.
It goes basically like this:
* Up until roughly 1200, 1300, research was done with a religious mindset and meant his:
- The world is built on God's will. Man cannot influence nature. Therefore experiments are meaningless and useless.
- What the book (especially the Bible) says is always right. Older books trump newer books.
- Theory beats practice.
* Then in late 13th, early 14th century, Ramon Llull made the ancient greek notion of the "demiourgos" popular again: The notion that there are laws of nature. Then, in early 15th century, copies of the Corpus Hermeticum returned to Europe via bycantine libraries. The Corpus Hermeticum postulated that the human contains a divine spark.
- The world is built on laws of nature created by God. God influences the world with these laws.
- The human is partly divine. Therefore the human can influence the laws of nature as well, if he finds the means to do so.
- What the book says is always right. Older books trump newer books.
- Experiments can be done, however they are only good for finding out the details about what is already known. If your experiment does not reproduce what is written in a book, then your experiment is wrong.
- Theory beats practice
* The dating of the Corpus Hermeticum, the invention of modern math and it replacing numerology, the growing pile of experimental evidence where the magical tomes are simply wrong, the continuing failures of sorcerers to actually do sorcery... By late 18th century, the scientific method was born in a continuous process. It didn't even have a name back then. It was just "the method".
- The world is built on laws of nature.
- The human can influence nature and find out more about it by doing experiments.
- The age of a piece of wisdom is irrelevant.
- Practice beats theory.
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