For him the fundamental shift that occurred as a result of the scientific revolution was not the move from a view of the universe in which everything circles around the Earth to one in which the planet orbits around the Sun. It was the shift from a way of thinking in which physics and a metaphysical interpretation of the purpose of things were inseparably connected to one in which science could do no more than explain the mechanical workings of a material world. The result was ‘the fatal estrangement’ – the modern war of the soul in which the pursuit of knowledge is at odds with the quest for
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