From earliest time, knowledge and wisdom have always been the domain of the spiritual adepts. Yogic adepts, mystics, shamans were the keepers of the flame of knowledge and truth beyond the everyday understanding of ordinary men and women of their times. They gained their knowledge and powers through direct encounter with Spirit, through personal initiations, intuition, meditation, direct revelation, and personal anointing. They mastered time and space and the forces of nature. They shared their knowledge through sacramental alchemy, secret codes and esoteric language.
Material science and spiritual science have always played tag with each other, seeking to disprove or discredit one another. Natural science answered and translated in objective language the questions and laws of life, nature, and healing. Gradually but surely worldly science dominated the realm of knowledge. For the most part, it has taken the upper hand as it became less and less enamoured with mysteries and mystic knowledge. It sought to reduce cosmic and spiritual laws to mechanised formulas. What couldn't be seen, touched, perceived by the senses and explained in quantifiable terms were considered myths and fantasy.
Material science soon took a more dominant position as the arbiter of the fruits of the tree of knowledge and truth, of good and evil, and of the tree of life and death.