The Shock of the New in the 16th Century

from When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?
Saul Frampton
     Around this time a fog descended over northern Europe. It covered the Rhine, merging with the reed beds and sea mists. It cloistered the churchyards of France. It slipped inside books, it tarnished sword blades.  It scaled the high walls of Oxford and surrounded Aristotle. It seems to enter flesh itself, and confuse the identities of thins and the very boundaries of mater. And then it settled in men's minds. . . .
     Scepticism arrived as a new and intoxicating intellectual force in the sixteenth century.

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