I agree the comparison between ancient sages and modern scientists and engineers isn't straightforward. The more direct comparison would be with modern philosophers who draw on science in pulling everything together and in making explicit the implications of empirical knowledge. The point of departure here is with the Enlightenment, the eighteenth century period of philosophy in Europe. There's the ancient sense of enlightenment in Greece and India, and there's the modern sense that's grounded not just in idle abstraction, but in the revolutionary experience of modern social and industrial progress.
Of course, all civilizations are revolutionary in that sense, to some degree, compared to nomadic life in the wild. But the ancient civilizations were more interested in stability than progress.
And elsewhere, I critique secular humanism and the concept of progress. I raise these things in this article to draw some contrasts, but I scrutinize them in other places:
