  These Renaissance trappings notwithstanding, there are also at least two reasons to think of Gassendi as very much among the moderns. For one, he embraces the new empiricist's assessment of the old science: what is wrong with the Aristotelians' physics is its routine presentation, as well as grounding, in apriori theoretical claims. He is not the only, or the first author of such a view. Galileo breaks with tradition in distinguishing a science of motion that, in principle at least, makes use of observation and experiment. Bacon and Descartes, for their part, also counsel (to varying degrees) a scientific method which builds on experiential knowledge. But among the savants of the early seventeenth century, only Gassendi, whose awareness of empiricism's roots and implications is evident across his intellectual pursuits, integrates philosophy and science on what he believes to be strictly empiricist grounds. This integration is a natural consequence of his suggestion that we gain all knowledge—outside of the theological—from the senses.