The cosmologist's second

“

“From the sixth century before the birth of Christ, philosophy with its clear, logical thinking entered into science. The sciences gradually lost their occult character. Anyone who could think could also become a scientist. Mathematical truths no longer had to be revealed. They were rather to be proved logically, as in Euclid's classic formulation. Thinking was discovered as a new human power. As with everything new, here too the power of the new––of thinking––was overestimated. People hoped to understand and explain everything by means of clear thinking. At the beginning, however, there were only a few people who had really developed the capacity to think to a sufficient degree. Therefore with the epoch of philosophy there also began an epoch of human authorities, of reverence for those people who could think for themselves. Humans were now admired in somewhat the same way that truths had been admired previously. In the late Middle Ages, in a decadent development of this scientific direction, this reverence for authority grew like a weed. In certain academic circles, the appeal to authority counted for more than any autonomous observation, any autonomous thinking.”