From Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity (pg.170), on the scientific world view and its insistence on empirical knowledge as the only authentic source of truth
… proposing no explanation but imposing an ascetic renunciation of all other spiritual fare was not [an idea] of a kind to allay anxiety but aggravated it instead. By a single stroke it claimed to sweep away the tradition of a hundred thousand years, which had become one with human nature itself. It wrote an end to the ancient animist covenant between man and nature, leaving nothing in place of that precious bond but an anxious quest in a frozen universe of solitude. With nothing to recommend it but a certain puritan arrogance, how could such an idea win acceptance? It did not; it still has not. It has however commanded recognition; but that is because, solely because of its prodigious power of performance
Extracts 