Religion
In reply to the discussion: The Mistrust of Science [View all]But they often had older presuppositions.
Moreover, the Enlightenment followed the Age of Discovery and was a consequence of it. Much of the "scientific method" worldview was hashed out prior to the Enlightenment. They just liked to claim that they invented it, and their supporters like to think so, too. Galileo, Newton, Hooke, and others in the 1600s and early 1700s had not an unreasonable view of things.
It's also unnecessary to expect perfection in a worldview. One can hold contrary opinions: I knew a PhD in evolutionary biology who was a young-Earth creationist and didn't want his advisor to know. (In vino veritas. Or "in cervesia veritas," as the case more accurately was.) He regarded the scientific method as a heuristic, which is precisely what it is. Also a materials scientist working on new materials for deep-sea sensors, who'd been in the field for many a year since getting his PhD, but who was an old-Earth creationist.
You can accept a worldview for one purpose and hold a contrary one for something else. We all do it. I posted earlier to a thread where the mother of a bad kid got nothing but condemnation for raising a bad kid, but where I had to point out that if the bad kid had been killed in the execution of a murder and was saying her kid was bad, most of us would be full of empathy and denounce most of those who said, "She had it coming, and she's really responsible for that murder victim's and her own kid's deaths." Or we're quick to defend Muslims when one Muslim does something wrong, but fast to point out how horrible Xianity is when a Xian does something just as wrong. We're inconsistent. That's how we are.
By the way, Newton's prediction for the end of the world is 2060. He was a goofball genius, or a genius goofball. Can't separate them out.