"There comes a time in every man's life when he wants certain questions answered. It just comes off as natural that people have come up with ways by which to answer them. In ancient times, if a king wanted something answered, he would order his court seer to slaughter an animal of some sort and divine the answer from the animal's entrails. Soon thereafter, man realized that much clearer answers could be gained through the examination of feces, bones, blood and other such icky substances. It seemed that the ickier the substance, the clearer the answers. Tomato paste out of the can, for instance, would not only tell a king who his enemies were, but what they were wearing, how much money they had, how much they had eaten in the past few days, and whether or not they had seen any good movies lately. This information proved invaluable to a good king, as they placed entertaining guests at a higher priority than personal hygiene.
"It wasn't until the Industrial Age that man realized that he could exploit animals and machines for answers. Scientists, as these new court seers were called, would round up rodents, lagomorphs and primates for their new divination rituals. They would inject these animals with molten lipstick to see if the cosmetics were safe. They would send monkeys into space to see if space was safe for monkeys. And they would run models of the Titanic into models of an iceberg, proving that the Titanic did indeed sink real far into the ocean. Tests have shown that had the Titanic been an 20"x5"x8" balsa-wood model it could have survived the impact.
The methods are different, but the results are the same. Man's questions are being answered, and more and more he is realizing that he is asking the wrong questions."
--Dr. Wesley Plinkett, A Taste of Your Own Medicine