> Pre-modern science, while not blind to utility, sought knowledge primarily in order to understand philosophical questions concerned with meaning, being, the good, and so on. Modern science, by contrast, grew out of a revolution in thought that reoriented politics around individual comfort through the mastery of nature. Modern science dismisses ancient metaphysical questions as (to borrow Francis Bacon’s words) the pursuit of pleasure and vanity.

Curious, because I think to a pre-modern philosopher the pursuit of knowledge and mastery is itself the pursuit of vanity & pleasure.

After all, (pace Aubrey de Grey) all men will some day die, no matter how much knowledge they have or what levels of technological control over the natural world they achieve.