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The present paper provides a historical and linguistic survey of the use of verbal tenses in Italian scientific texts. As linguistic studies show, contemporary texts are characterized by the high frequency of the Present tense, since it leads to atemporal, generally valid statements. In scientific texts, the narrative component of discourse is weakened and the Present tense plays a dominant role even though the narrative component is significant. By contrast, during the 1600s – on the eve of the experimental method – scientific texts show a wide range of verbal tenses and moods, according to the model provided by literary texts. This distributional pattern is confirmed by an analysis based on a large corpus of scientific texts covering a period stretching between the 1600s and the end of the 1800s. The historical trend of tense frequency in scientific texts shows the increasing presence of the Present tense and of "narrative" tenses (according to Weinrich's classification) as opposed to "commentative" tenses.