[slumberdisrupt]

I brought up Tyson because I watched a video recently where this guy argues that this whole perspective is an especially American phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0S1rH8AiE

I'm sympathetic to this even if this lethargic attitude goes back to the religious period as you say. We can at least find the roots of it in the Enlightenment with Newton's "hypotheses non fingo".