[i]f In Other Sciences We Should Arrive

It Is Not Necessarily Impossible For Human Beings To Fly, But It So Happens That God Did Not Give Them The Knowledge Of How To Do It. It Follows, Therefore, That Anyone Who Claims That He Can Fly Must Have Sought The Aid Of The Devil. To Attempt To Fly Is Therefore Sinful.

As Regards Authority I So Proceed. Boetius Says In The Second Prologue To His Arithmetic, 'if An Inquirer Lacks The Four Parts Of Mathematics, He Has Very Little Ability To Discover Truth.' And Again, 'without This Theory No One Can Have A Correct Insight Into Truth.' And He Says Also, 'i Warn The Man Who Spurns These Paths Of Knowledge That He Cannot Philosophize Correctly.' And Again, 'it Is Clear That Whosoever Passes These By, Has Lost The Knowledge Of All Learning.'

All Science Requires Mathematics. The Knowledge Of Mathematical Things Is Almost Innate In Us. This Is The Easiest Of Sciences, A Fact Which Is Obvious In That No One's Brain Rejects It; For Laymen And People Who Are Utterly Illiterate Know How To Count And Reckon.

There Are Four Great Sciences, Without Which The Other Sciences Cannot Be Known Nor A Knowledge Of Things Secured ... Of These Sciences The Gate And Key Is Mathematics ... He Who Is Ignorant Of This [mathematics] Cannot Know The Other Sciences Nor The Affairs Of This World.

All Science Requires Mathematics. [editors' Summary Of Bacon's Idea, Not Bacon's Wording.]