Aside from the fact that people didn't talk that way back then, the converse argument also holds true. We always have believed ourselves to be at the apex of knowledge. In 1610 the hubris belonged to the church, today the hubris belongs to those who believe science has all the answers.

The nice thing about science is at least it is actively questioning itself all the time. However individual scientists can easily subscribe to a philosophically materialist viewpoint without adequate evidence simply because they've spent their whole lives devoted to physics. The study of the correlation between the brain and consciousness needs to go much much deeper before they even hope to come close to having a crack at the free will debate.