Renaissance scholars acknowledged the debt they owed to classical literature and thought. They appreciated ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts, restoring them to prominence in their own society, and understood the importance of exposing themselves to different ways of thinking. As Renaissance scientist Vannoccio Biringuccio wrote: "I am certain that new information always gives birth in men's minds to new discoveries and so to further information."

A Unique Age

However, Renaissance scholars also believed that their own time had much to offer human history. For example, in 1620, the scholar Alessandro Tassoni wrote in his A Comparison Between Ancient and Modern Ingenuity:

What did the Greeks and Romans ever invent that can be compared with the printing press.... Let us pass on to the compass and to the nautical chart.... What glory is owed to him who taught the Portuguese to navigate...