Rationalism, Relativism and Scientific Method

{1} That it is excellent to be rational is admitted by many people, but hardly anyone is able to tell us what it means to be rational and why being rational is so important. The Presocratics were called rational because they omitted the gods from their explanations, the Church Fathers were called rational because they eliminated Gnosticism, Einstein was called rational l because he abolished, or seemed to abolish the aether. In all l these cases there is the assumption that some doctrines are 1 true, others false, and being rational means accepting what is f · believed to be true.