Today, it has become quite common to think of science and technology as dehumanising and alienating. But, is this thinking intrinsic to the pursuit of knowledge, or is it merely a characteristic of the state of science in our age? Quite contrary to the present, if we go back to earlier periods, even long before the Renaissance, we see that technical advances, such as innovation in agriculture and the mechanical arts and the harnessing of new sources of power, had a predominantly humanising effect. These technical advances highlighted the value of human intelligence for understanding and controlling the forces of nature.