I didn't know that! And I'm a bit of a Poe scholar. You have educated me, Saiph. Thank you. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />EDIT: Okay, I need more coffee. I just read a bit about that, and in fact I did know. I just forgot. <img src="/images/icons/shocked.gif" /><br /><br />It is definitely true that a great many of the major forces in scientific advancement have been priests, monks, or otherwise a part of the religious hierarchy. And you've hit on exactly why. There were very few educated people in Europe even during the Enlightenment who were not closely involved with the Church in one way or another. Religion gets a bad rap, especially the big ones like Christianity and Islam, but in amidst all the terrible wrong that they have caused, they have also done some really valuable things, most notably preserving the written word. Literacy for a long time was largely the domain of religious scholars. This gradually changed, however, and nowdays literacy and education are so widely available they are no longer considered a luxury but a right. And that is a wonderful thing as far as science is concerned. It is good that religion kept literacy alive, but it's better when it doesn't have to carry the whole burden. After all, religion does impart certain biases on a person's thinking, and that can be a problem.<br /><br />Interestingly, this fact (that religious scholars were the main force behind intellectual advancement for many centuries in Europe) is why the language of science was Latin until relatively recently. (Some very old universities still conduct graduation ceremonies in Latin for the sake of that tradition.) Latin was the language of scholars because it was the language of the Church. And it was the language of the Church because it was the language of Rome, but that's a story for another thread. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>