Views on Science and Zola

Many months ago I was reading a wonderful book called, The History of the Warfare Between Science and Theology. It was all about the stupid things that Christians had claimed the Bible said to be true, and how science had proved them wrong. It was written in 1896 (I think) and was just full of the joys of science and possibilities. It seems there's a section of late Victorian literature where everyone is very positive and excited by the possibilities of science. Course once it didn't provide instant cures for all the worlds problems lots of people became disillusioned with it and went back to religion, or other things in their search for answers. But I've been thinking about people's perceptions of science a lot over the past couple months.

In my apocalypse book, of all places, I found this quote by the author Zola from his novel L'Oeuvre written in 1885.

It was inevitable. All our activity , our boastfulness about our knowledge was bound to lead us back again to doubt. The present century has cast so much light on so many things, but it was bound to end under the threat of another wave of darkness....And this is the root of our troubles. We have been promised too much and led to expect too much, including the conquest and the explanation of everything; and now we've grown impatient. We're surprised things don't move more quickly. We're resentful because, in a matter of a hundred years, science hasn't given us absolute certitude and perfect happiness. Why then continue, we ask, since we shall never know everything and our break will always be bitter? The century has been a failure. Hearts are tortured with pessimism and brains clouded with mysticism for, try as we may to put imagination to flight with the cold light of science, we have the supernatural once more in arms against us and the whole world of legend in revolt, bent on enslaving us again in our moment of fatigue and uncertainty... I'm no more sure of things than anyone else; my mind, too, is divided. But I do not think that this last shattering upheaval of our old religious fears was only to be expected. We are not at the end; we are a transition, the beginning only of something new.... And it's that sets my mind at rest, and somehow encourages me: to know we are moving towards rationality and the firm foundations that only science can give... Unless of course madness makes us come from a cropper in the dark and we end up like our friend sleeping there in his coffin, strangled by our own ideals.

I just thought he had really great sentiments and found myself agreeing with what he said. It was a real window into the situation, and was struck that it was written before the second world war, when I assumed opinions had changed. It could almost have been written today. I just loved it, I really want to find the book it's written in, even though Bill had a low opinion of the author.