“The Greeks wanted to know everything so that they could think better and the Romans so that they could act better, but the medieval Christians wanted it for the greater glory of God and the remission of their sins. To us today, faced with a knowledge explosion of truly staggering proportions, all three of our ancestor cultures may look thoroughly naive in their hopes. We should be cautious in out conclusions, however; as their descendants, we carry in the strata of our minds all sorts of fossil gifts from them.”

(Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference, p. 67.)