Dutch Historian, Johan Huizinga

In "Homo Ludens," Huizinga argued that play was the decisive formative influence in human culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Huizinga

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Quotations:

Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things. Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), Dutch historian. Life and Thought in America, ch. 2 (1972). An observation made on a visit to America in the 20s.

The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable. Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), Dutch historian. In the Shadow of Tomorrow, ch. 6 (1936).

History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated. Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), Dutch historian. In the Shadow of Tomorrow, ch. XX (1936).

These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution. Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), Dutch historian. In the Shadow of Tomorrow, ch. 11 (1936).

A sympathetic view from Frederick Franck:

The impasse contained in the scientific viewpoint itself can only be broken through by the attainment of a view of nothingness which goes further than, which transcends the nihil of nihilism.  The basic Buddhist insight of Sunyata, usually translated as "emptiness," "the void," or "no-Thingness," that transcends this nihil, offers a viewpoint that has no equivalent in Western thought.

The consciousness of the scientist, in his mechanized, dead and dumb universe, logically reaches the point where --- if he practices his science existentially and not merely intellectually -- the meaning of his own existence becomes an absurdity and he stands on the rim of the abyss of nihil face to face with his own nothingness.  People are not aware of this dilemma.  That it does not cause great concern is in itself a symptom of the sub-marine earthquake of which our most desperate world-problems are merely symptomatic.

... It is becoming ever clearer that the terrors of war, hunger and despoliation are neither economic, nor technolgical problems for which there are economic or technological solutions. They are primarily spiritual problems..." 

Frederick Franck was born into a non-observant Jewish family in Holland. He was subsequently baptized a Protestant. After graduating as a dentist, Franck began the first dental clinic at Albert Schweitzer's hospital in West Africa.  Later, having embarked a career as writer and artist, Mr. Franck heeded Pope John XXIII's call to build a society of peace on earth (Pacem in Terris.)  Franck became the official artist of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and, as a tribute to Pope John, has created a temple of all faiths called Pacem in Terris on his property in Warwick, New York.