Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/47

 speak more accurately, large sections of the clergy were the standing examples of obscurantism. Today their place has been taken by scientists —

The obscurantists of any generation are in the main constituted by the greater part of the practitioners of the dominant methodology. Today scientific methods are dominant, and scientists are the obscurantists.

In order to understand our situation today we must note that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the educated section of western Europe inherited the results of about five centuries of intense speculative activity. The mistaken expectation of obtaining a dogmatic finality in speculative first principles has obscured the very considerable success of this speculative epoch. By reason of the preservation of manuscripts to an extent enjoyed by no previous nascent civilization, this ferment of speculation could appropriate the thoughts of the earlier classical speculation, Pagan and Christian, terminating with the decadence of Rome. This advantage carried with it a weakness. The medieval movement was too learned. It formed a closed system of thinking about other people’s thoughts. In this way, medieval philosophy, and indeed modern philosophy, detracted from its utility as a discipline of speculative Reason by its inadequate grasp of the fecundity of nature and of the corresponding fecundity of thought. The scholastics confined