Go back far enough in history and you'll find the point where science emerged from philosophy. Indeed for most of history, science was known as natural philosophy.
As Mark Vernon writes in his delightful new book, The Idler Guide to Ancient Philosophy:
The presocratic philosophers were those individuals who began to ask the kind of questions that cause a certain distance to open between the individual and the world in which they had felt immersed. They began to create a mentality that feels more familiar to us, one that planted the seeds of the modern. We know one of those queries left by Anaxamines of Miletus, one of the earliest philosophers of the sixth century (B.C.E.). He thought to blow on his hand in two ways. First with his mouth wide open. Then, with his lips pursed. He noticed a difference. Try it.
When blowing with his mouth wide open, Anaxamines found that his breath felt warm. With his lips pursed, it felt cold on his hand. And then he thought to ask why.
That small question, Vernon writes, represents a massive leap of mind. "It wonders if the difference might have a physical reason, a proto-scientific explanation. We now describe the effect as a result of Boyle's law."
The air from pursed lips feels cooler because it undergoes a rapid expansion as it leaves your mouth. This requires energy, so the temperature of the exhalation drops. The breath from an open mouth does not undergo any change of pressure, so it remains at body temperature.
But Vernon points out that there is more going on with this primitive exercise of scientific reasoning. "The effect of asking is to distance you from the experience itself." To take an inner step back, as it were, and reflect on the experience. This was not just the earliest written record of introspection, according to Vernon, but also of science.
A former priest in the Anglican Church and a trained psychotherapist, Vernon has been writing and teaching about philosophy, science and culture for many years. His Idler Guide to Ancient Philosophy grew out of lectures he delivered at the new academy of the same name based in Notting Hill, London.
Indeed, the platform has quite a history. Founded originally as a magazine in the 1990s by journalist Tom Hodgkinson, it was inspired by the classic collection of Idler essays written by Samuel Johnson, who was no slouch when it came to devoting time and energy to the thinking and writing about… well, whatever struck his fancy.
The magazine had to struggle somewhat at first to keep in print until Hodgkinson took it online. Now, it flourishes not only as a journal but as an actual and virtual academy somewhat in the tradition of Plato. (Plato gets his own chapter in Vernon's book.)
Courses are held at the Academy in London, and then offered online for a fee, which gives users access to several video lectures and other resources.
So far, there are only a handful of published Idler Guides, but I expect there will be more as the program continues to expand, perhaps giving the popular Oxford Short Introductions a run for their money.
While you can only order the books from the site directly, I expect (hope) they may become available at Amazon soon.
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