A cultural delusion is widespread in the twentieth century. The extraordinary progress in science and technology that we have achieved in this century has deluded many of our contemporaries into thinking that similar progress obtains in other fields of mental activity. They unquestioningly think that the twentieth century is superior to its predecessors in all the efforts of the humanmind.
Mortimer Adler, The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought (1992), p. ix [1]