"What would now be called science was an integral part of the new machine system from the beginning. This orderly knowledge, which was based on cosmic regularities, flourished, as we have seen, with the cult of the sun: star-watching and calendar-making coincided with and supported the institution of kingship, even though no small part of the efforts of the priests and soothsayers was, in addition, devoted to interpreting the meaning of singular events such as the appearance of comets, eclipses of the sun or moon, or erratic natural phenomena such as the flight of birds or the state of sacrificed animal's entrails.
"No king could move safely or effectively without the support of such organized 'higher knowledge,' any more than the Pentagon can move today without consulting its specialized scientists, technical experts, games theorists and computers--a new hierarchy supposedly less fallible than the entrail-diviners, but, to judge by their gross miscalculations, not notably so.
"To be effective, this kind of knowledge, must remain a secret priestly monopoly. If everyone had equal access to the sources of knowledge and to the system of interpretation, no one would believe in their infallibility, since their errors could then not be concealed. Hence the shocked protests of Ipu-wer against the revolutionaries who overthrew the Old Kingdom in Egypt was based on the fact that the "secrets of the temple lay unbared"; that is, they had made 'classified information' public. Secret knowledge is the key to any system of total control. Until printing was invented, the written word remained largely a class monopoly. Today the language of higher mathematics plus computerism has restored both the secrecy and the monopoly, with a consequent resumption of totalitarian control." (p. 199)
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