I'm now at page 800 in Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver". Scientific discovery in the late 1600s plays an important role in the book, although royal intriques, changes in commerce and trade, and religion also figure heavily. Here's another quote from the book, made by one of the main characters, Daniel Waterhouse. Daniel is speaking to Robert Hooke, a real scientist from the 1600s, who is perhaps best known for contributing to the discovery that all life is made out of cells. Hooke was a brilliant man though and made contributions in many fields. So anyway, here is Stephenson speaking through his character Daniel Waterhouse:

Consider: Newton has thought things that no man before has ever thought. A great accomplishment, to be sure. Perhaps the greatest achievement any human mind has ever made. Very well --what does this say of Newton, and of us. Why, that his mind is framed in such a way that it can out-think anyone else's. So, all hail Isaac Newton! Let us give him his due, and glorify and worship whatever generative force can frame such a mind. Now, consider Hooke. Hooke has perceived things that no man before has ever perceived. What does that say of Hooke, and of us? That Hooke was framed in some special way? No, for just look at you. Robert--by your leave, you are stooped, asthmatic, fitful, beset by aches and ills, your eyes and ears are no better than those of men who've not perceived a thousandth part of what you have. Newton makes his discoveries in geometrickal realms where our minds cannot go, he strolls in a garden filled with wonders, to which he has the only key. But you Hooke, are cheek-by-jowl with all of humanity in the streets of London. Anyone can look at the things you have looked at. But in those things you see what no one else has. You are the millionth person to look at a spark, a flea, a raindrop, the moon, and the first to see it. For anyone to say that this is less remarkable than what Newton has done, is to understand things in a hallow and jejeune way: 'tis like going to a Shakespeare play and seeing only the sword-fights."

Outside of Newton, I think that English science, more than any European science in the past few centuries, has been characterized by its reliance on observation. The French were great rationalists. The Germans were mystics and mathematicians. Although (at least in my mind), Newton was the greatest scientist the English ever produced, English science itself owes more to the tradition of observation that Hooke was very pivotal in.