It maybe just makes people rationalise and justify their positions more thoroughly. The rationalists today are ignorant even of history. Isaac Newton was an alchemist steeped in magic, and all of his alchemical papers have ended up in the Library of Jerusalem (Keynes would have probably burnt them, he purchased all the mathematical papers and donated them to a British Library) and the author of British navigation and cartography, John Dee was engaged in Solomonic magic and the invocation of spirits. They were the top scientists of the day.
