Research in the Hellenistic Age (z.B. Aristotle) was based on observation only. Like, an ancient Greek philosopher would see that a rock fell off the side of a cliff and say "things tend to fall downward, therefore each thing has a desire to be on the ground." The philosopher might then ponder leaves blowing around or birds flying and say "some things have a stronger desire to be on the ground than other things; 'weight' is a things desire to be on the ground." The later Greeks and then the Romans focused on expanding that foundation by compiling encyclopediae that held thousands of such observations and the musings of philosophers. Going into the medieval period, science passed from philosophers mostly to the Christian Church. Monks dedicated a lot of time to making observations and even performing experiments designed by what would later look sort of like the scientific method. Rather than studying science by reading an encyclopedia, medieval scholars studied at libraries and even universities, reading hundreds or thousands of scientific texts. Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon pushed the importance of empirical evidence and eschewed the more philosophical rambling of earlier scientists. By the end of the medieval period, science looked about as methodic as it does today, in general. With the dawn of the renaissance period, scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, and Francis Bacon were proving old ideas wrong using logic and experimentation, and often got themselves into a lot of trouble for it. Modern research methods include a lot of emphasis on first understanding the topic through secondary research and primary observation, second formulating a hypothesis, and third testing that hypothesis thoroughly by trying to methodically disprove it. Finally, other researchers must also independently reach the same conclusions from their own attempts so falsify the hypothesis, before the research can lead to new ideas accepted into the greater body of knowledge.