About "The Magic of Reality"

Why would it attack cultures that had some knowledge about the solar system? I don't know what cultures and what knowledge are you referring to but I'm quite sure that they would have welcomed, and make the most of a few telescopes, had they had the opportunity to use them.
Greek philosophers proposed a good number of theories about the ultimate nature of matter. One of them was the atomic theory defended by Democritus and possibly formulated in India earlier on (according to wikipedia). They failed to conclude anything outside the fields of logic and mathematics because of their disdain for structured observation and experimental work. However they set the foundations of future scientific thinking in the western world by attempting to explain nature without recourse to the supernatural. Cheers to them!
Science is always catching up/testing with the world of ideas. Mainly with  ideas generated by science itself (do neutrinos travel faster than light?), sometimes with ideas coming from other areas (does acupuncture work?). I would say that the main generator of ideas about the nature of reality is science nevertheless: any good piece of research (of any kind, not only physical sciences)  usually ends up formulating more questions that the ones it tried to answer. These questions are invariably of the testable kind: not so many about the thoughts of a god, life in a parallel universe or the size of a leprechaun. Science cannot answer those questions which is just as well as they don't seem to be very interesting when compared to the big ones: how did the universe come into being? We know how life evolved but, how did it start in the first place? and How did consciousness arise from unconscious creatures? How can we formulate and defend moral values based in the evidence we currently have about the "well being of conscious creatures" (Sam Harris)
Finally, the evidence for neutrinos travelling faster than light is by no means conclusive.  I love the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Much more than a single experiment will be needed to remove  that pillar modern physics. But if the experiments give a final verdict a limit of the speed of light will go out of the window and that will be further proof of the power of science to go beyond the limits of our everyday experience.