This picture is too simple. The triumphs of science, particularly Newtonian physics, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries persuaded most thinking people that the physical universe had a uniform structure accessible to human reason. It began to seem that human nature and human social systems might have a similarly mechanical structure. This emerging world view cast humankind in an observing mold. Through perception, measurement, and mathematics, the human mind would uncover the secrets of nature (including those of the mind itself, a part of nature) and the laws (natural, not positive) of social interaction-including laws decreeing balanced government, economic behavior in accordance with the principles of supply and demand, and moral and legal principles based on immutable principles of psychology and human behavior. The mind was a camera, recording activities both natural and social and alike determined by natural laws, and an adding machine.

Richard A. Posner, Richard A. Posner - What Ha…, loc. 22