“In so far as the intellectual climates of different epochs can be contrasted, the eighteenth century in Europe was the complete antithesis to the Middle Ages. … the Middle Ages were haunted with the desire to rationalize the infinite: the men of the eighteenth century rationalized the social life of modern communities, and based their sociological theories on an appeal to the facts of nature. The earlier period was the age of faith based upon reason. In the later period, they let sleeping dogs lie: it was the age of reason, based upon faith. To illustrate my meaning: – St. Anselm would have been distressed if he had failed to find a convincing argument for the existence of God, and on this argument he based his edifice of faith, whereas Hume based his Dissertation on the Natural History of Religion upon his faith in the order of nature. In comparing these epochs it is well to remember that reason can err, and that faith may be misplaced.”
–– Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 57, NY: The Free Press, 1925, from 1969 edition.
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