An age is simply its instruments of research

“The political orthodoxy or new world-phase that is taking shape, whether for good or ill, has still immense forces to contend against and to manipulate. In the past, peoples the whole of whose mind has been bent to a practical end have not usually been very speculative or intellectually free. The man-of-action is not very speculative, usually, nor is he a ‘free intelligence’ as a rule, but an extremely narrow, unreflective, functional person. The Roman has left a little behind him compared with the Greek or the Chinese. So, on the same principle, how can an age, so bent on practical tasks as ours, be intellectually free or very speculative? It is only when a community is secure (and usually soon after, owing to its freedom and speculative licence, it begins to disintegrate, or else it takes a plunge or a series of plunges back into a self-defensive obscurantism) that it can become free and creative. And although there are great forces established in the world to-day, their power is very fluid and by no means secure; and they have no time for play.” - Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man, Book II, ch. II, p. 160.