It’s slightly more than “people were already thinking”, more akin to the methodology we refined later of scientific thinking existed in many ways before that as well, and thinking of it as a change in scope is incorrect, as its more of a change in scale. If you do believe that there are specific step changes that were made which help us progress, that (to me) limits the possibilities of what can be achieved. Instead if we look at our progress, intellectual, moral and technological, as the results of a more gradualist growth, that actually tells us a bit more about what we need to do to make progress come about.

A fuller exposition of this here if you’re interested — https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/combinatorial-theory-of-progress