Standard accounts of the history of philosophy report that in the seventeenth century a transition was made from the ‘age of faith’ to the ‘age of reason’. Undoubtedly this was the propaganda of the time. There was much talk of beginning anew, of breaking the shackles of theological authority and reaching for the first time in human history a genuinely autonomous intellectual stance. Great hopes were held out for reason, not just in the advancement of science but in society and politics generally. Instead of ecclesiastical dogma there would be reason, instead of a society founded on irrational custom and arbitrary political authority there would be a society based on reason, that is on genuine knowledge – scientific knowledge – of the nature of man as a social and political animal. In all this talk of reason, however, it was never made clear how reason was supposed to apply outside that single context – modern science – where it had proved its credentials. The age of science it certainly was. Certainly the sciences were advancing and in important respects were changing the picture of the world. But there was a naïve belief that the steady accumulation of scientific knowledge could itself justify belief in a new ‘age of reason’. Francis Bacon had not been so carried away; he had wanted both faith and reason (science) because he saw that science itself could not provide ‘wisdom’. When subsequent thinkers wanted to do away with faith altogether, when they saw no room for faith in the age of reason, they were confronted with the problem of the values reason was supposed to serve. To this question scientific reason itself gave no answer.
