> That ‘glorious hope’ was quickly dashed, however. In Anaxagoras’s account, it seemed to Socrates, Mind had no agency other than initially setting things in motion, and no morality. ... For this reason, Socrates tells us plainly, he completely lost interest in the heavens, in science, and in physical reality (ta onta, ‘the things that are’).
> And so (as I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere) the first global franchise [Christian faith] was set up on an anti-science basis.
Supposedly, Socrates wasn't disenchanted with the disenchantment because he thought it was nonsense, but because it didn't address existential/moral issues that he found pertinent.
I'm not sure this drive is best characterized as anti-science. There's a difference between denying scientific research as today understood and denying a inherently materialistic worldview as one's overarching context of life. The latter is often married to science, but it doesn't have to be.
No shortage of science was and is done by deeply religious individuals. And indeed religions co-opted science in various ways. And we had materialist* views pretty far back (clearly in both Greece and India).
What's changed recently IMO, is that at those ancient times, a materialistic worldview was a sort of "Yeah, and?" sort of deal, since it offered little in terms of giving a direction to the life of an individual. Nowadays, there is at least a technological eschatology, with people expecting or looking forward to luxuries, longevity, and other such things as have usually been the promises of religions. Funnily enough, insofar as this eschatology contains a place for human agency, its mostly been taken up by organizations and corporations few would see as anything but morally corrupt. It's a weird eschatology where the idea is that if you pump enough juice in the greed machine, at some point a phase transition occurs and all of it can be converted in stable welfare for all.
> And so (as I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere) the first global franchise [Christian faith] was set up on an anti-science basis.
Supposedly, Socrates wasn't disenchanted with the disenchantment because he thought it was nonsense, but because it didn't address existential/moral issues that he found pertinent.
I'm not sure this drive is best characterized as anti-science. There's a difference between denying scientific research as today understood and denying a inherently materialistic worldview as one's overarching context of life. The latter is often married to science, but it doesn't have to be.
No shortage of science was and is done by deeply religious individuals. And indeed religions co-opted science in various ways. And we had materialist* views pretty far back (clearly in both Greece and India).
What's changed recently IMO, is that at those ancient times, a materialistic worldview was a sort of "Yeah, and?" sort of deal, since it offered little in terms of giving a direction to the life of an individual. Nowadays, there is at least a technological eschatology, with people expecting or looking forward to luxuries, longevity, and other such things as have usually been the promises of religions. Funnily enough, insofar as this eschatology contains a place for human agency, its mostly been taken up by organizations and corporations few would see as anything but morally corrupt. It's a weird eschatology where the idea is that if you pump enough juice in the greed machine, at some point a phase transition occurs and all of it can be converted in stable welfare for all.