He is essentially opening up the internal question among people, whether humans are the most powerful on earth or not.

Veteran Environmentalist & Technophile Stewart Brand on "4 Environmental Heresies"

Primary Source: Francis Bacon

"Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed..."

Book I, Novum Organum(1620)

This is not assigned reading, but I thought I'd post a link the to the source of yesterday's quote from Francis Bacon. Novum Organum (trans. roughly as the "New Instrument") was Bacon's attempt to go beyond the deductive and observational philosophy of Aristotle and introduce a new method of inquiry based on inductive reasoning and experiment. As a primary architect of the "scientific method," Bacon viewed the systematic accumulation of knowledge about nature's laws as a path to greater power over nature. He is thus credited (or blamed, depending on one's perspective) for helping to start the "scientific revolution" of the seventeenth century, and the technological revolutions which followed. Bacon's vision of organized research also laid the foundation for the Royal Society in England and, much later, the American Philosophical Society in the United States.

Since man is weaker than nature, he cannot hope to control it by surpassing it, and must therefore find a balance.

Reponse to Francis Bacon

On a daily basis humans command a lot from nature and are seemingly in charge of the world, but ultimately nature itself has the last word.

Francis Bacon

Nature, including human nature, causes us to be enslaved and ultimately reject the concept of free will.

Quote

It's like a game; the rules are set, but that does not mean we cannot win.