Man is Nature's agent and interpreter; he does and understands only as much as he has observed of the order of nature in fact or by inference' he does not know and cannot do more.
Human knowledge and human power come to the same thing, because ignorance of cause frustrates effect. For Nature is conquered only by obedience; and that which in thought is a cause, is like a rule in practice.
All man can do to achieve results is to bring natural bodies together and take them apart; Nature does the rest internally.
The subtlety of nature far surpasses the subtlety of sense and intellect, so that men's fine meditations, speculations, and endless discussions are quite insane, except that there is no one who notices.
Francis Bacon (1620) Novum Organon
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