The introductory chapter extracted from the first volume of Sarton's Magnus Opus 'The introduction to the history of science' from 1927 is an important work, worth to be rediscovered for different reasons. A lot of ideas we still hold about the history of science are put into perspective. The fall of the Greek civilization, the decline of scientific discovery during the Dark Ages and the role of religion in that decline, and the idea that science was exclusively a western matter to name a few.