In 1970, Michael Polanyi wrote an essay called “Why Did We Destroy Europe?” In it, he reflected on the cancerous spread of ideologies and war in the twentieth century. He argued that scientific rationalism had initially “been a major influence towards intellectual, moral and social progress.” But its chronic posture of skepticism and doubt had undermined human reason itself and bred a widespread nihilism. That nihilism had been weaponized by the pseudoscientific theories of Marxism and National Socialism with murderous results.

Despite its great achievements, scientific rationalism had, in effect, “become a danger to the spiritual conception of man.” And this had “brought about the destruction of liberal societies over wide ranges of Europe.”

Throughout his many books and essays, Polanyi—a fellow of the Royal Society and an acclaimed physical chemist before turning to philosophy—warned that the real threat to modern humanity was a bizarre form of “moral inversion” fed by a crisis of reason. A convert to Christianity in his thirties, he was deeply influenced by the work of the early Church Fathers, especially Augustine and his famous words Crede, ut intelligas—“Believe, so that you may understand.”

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