Empirical thinking was prevalent during both Greek and Roman rule, where scientists were more commonly called "natural philosophers" as they practiced professions qualified as medicine, or followers of religious theory such as temple healers. A pre-Socratic philosopher named Thales (640-546 BC) was nicknamed the "father of science" because he was the first to postulate that there was a natural response to otherwise supernatural phenomena such as earth floating on water and that earthquakes were caused from the agitation of that water by underwater movements or currents rather than the religious view according to which the earthquakes were caused by the god Poseidon (Arieti, 2005). Further progress in scientific thought and procedure was made in those years by Anaximander (610-546 BC), Pythagoras (570-500 BC), Xenophanes (570-478 BC) and Heraclitus (535-475 BC). Although each man had a different interest in science, and the areas studied included mathematics, astronomy, geometry, theology and metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and cosmology; all have had a major impact on modern science. The advancement of Aristotelian science was halted by the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus who ruled from 1081 until his death in 1118 due to