I am perfectly well aware of this, thank you.
That doesn't mean those who believed this were right. Once the scientific method was developed, it was in fact quickly shown that they were wrong.
It should be pointed out that metaphysics and the other purely speculative disciplines reached wildly diverse results, not only between different civilizations such as the Middle East, Europe, India and China, but within those civilizations. So which of these results are we to accept as "the truth" and on what basis can we base that conclusion?
Science, otoh, properly done will reach exactly the same conclusions whether the experiment is performed in Palo Alto or Peking.
Understood -- my remark was for the lurkers, based on your comment
While I don't rank these various types of belief, I think it odd to claim that the only one we can demonstrate to be true is the "lowest" on the scale, while those supported solely by mental gymnastics are the "highest."
One might note also C.S. Lewis's essay On Belief in which he ranks other kinds of evidence based knowledge, e.g. historical, forensics (e.g. sworn testimony), and the like -- more accurate than "I believe" but less accurate than experimentation.
Another feature not touched on much was covered in the book Galileo's Daughter which pointed out the change in questions from "Why?" (as in, why did God make things like this) to "Why?" (as in, what is the mechanism underlying what is observed).
Cheers!