I can’t agree with this. You may be describing the formalization of science, but science was occurring well beyond the bound of the scientific method. Ancient

I can’t agree with this. You may be describing the formalization of science, but science was occurring well beyond the bound of the scientific method. Ancient science generally gets broken down into mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and material. If we skip right to medicine and material, there was a huge amount of recorded “knowledge” of chemicals that either functioned as medicine or manufacturing, dating back 5k years. The people absolutely knew “these combinations worked” but still didn’t completely distinguish chemistry from magic and ritual and God. There’s still science occurring there. Some combination of knowledge being applied and passed down through generations. There is precursor to our scientific method happening in parts, and it was still science.