Discoveries in Telford's translations and commentaries on Greek philosophy are discoveries so basic and so important as to drastically change the significance of almost everything the Greeks said. These discoveries were made in two areas, Greek linguistics and philosophic and scientific procedure, which, until one man had become skilled in both, had never before impacted on each other. Telford discovered that what the Greeks tried to say was obscured by the modern projection, upon both their language and their works, of precisely the reductive way of thinking that their philosophy was designed to correct.

Above all, Telford shows the Greeks were well aware of the procedures they used, while today there are few who even understand the relevance of procedure to science or philosophy. And it is procedure, far more than the discoveries dependent upon it, that constitutes, not only the greatest contribution of the Greeks, but the knowledge from which modern science might most sensibly profit. Moreover, Telford's explanation of the nature of procedure in all science, the variety of ways in which inquiry may be accomplished, is by far the most complete to be found.