"The modern origins of empirical scientific knowledge lie in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This time period, known as the Scientific Revolution, saw advances such as Newton's theory of gravitation, Boyle's gas laws, Hooke's recognition that all living things are made of cells, and the beginning of the Royal Society... The spirit that infused this time period brought forth a whole host of new knowledge, and the disproving of facts that had existed for centuries, if not millennia. ...some of the most important components of this endeavor were to try to eliminate errors and create a means of spreading correct facts. Many of the papers presented in the early years of the Royal Society were devoted to trying to understand errors, to root out misunderstandings, or to test the veracity of tales told to them that often seemed too good to be true. ...Most important, they didn't keep this new knowledge secret. They spread it far and wide, publishing it and disseminating it through the loose network of natural philosophers of Europe."