@JoeLee-Doktor: I can't say I've heard of the term (pessimistic induction) which is why I was asking about it. Historians of intellectual ideas do and still point out that there is connection between ancient Greek culture and todays scientific culture. The very fact that many words of scientific import are greek in origin is an important clue. Galileo was not a sui generis scientific genius coming out of nowhere.

The whole intellectual culture of the early renaissance was shaken up at the time by Averroes who read & reread Aristotles Metaphysics fifty times! Its this rereading that acted as trigger for modern science. Most things are trivial in hindsight, including things like calculus and gravity - which at the time were immensely difficult problems.

@HWalters: I would agree: the colour crimson is very different from light of wavelength 700 nm (I may have got the wavelength wrong). Colour, as we perceive it, is a bit more complex than the pure colours picked out from a spectrum.

I don't think anyone doubts that ancient greek thought has influenced modern philosophical thought. That's trivially true. That doesn't give us a good enough reason to say that Aristotelian physics is as correct as Newtonian (or later) physics