The desire to know, to understand, seems to be largely a Western phenomenon. I'm not aware of any Eastern philosophical or cultural tradition that places any great emphasis on reason. Yet in the West, the more impenetrable a question seems to be, the more we want to dig in.
The Eastern traditions lack any notion of a personal God Who man made in His image (or reflection); thus man possesses reason and free will as a result. When you think about it, you might say that the idea of the imago Dei is the foundation of all the sciences: God created a universe that is "reasonable," or capable of being understood; and he created man with the reason to understand it....
In any case, science did not arise in the East; only in the West.
Thank you so much for all of your outstanding essays!
Then, it is reasoned, if we are created in His image (which pertains to dominion and not logic), and in His likeness (which pertains to His ability to love and not power), we believe that we have the power and the mind to unlock all the mysteries of the world through reason.
The Age of Reason ushered the notion that man can solve everything. In doing so, man was deified (humanism), and God was correspondingly humanized.
But God reminds us that His thoughts are not our thouths and His ways are not our ways. Which is a neat way of saying that we will not figure out God's mysteries by our ways and our thoughts! But many will be mislead in trying because in effect the Age of Reason worships man, not God.
And in other news, in college we used to say, "Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once." Of course, that was a long time ago and in another country, besides, the wench is dead and controlled substances were involved.