From the introduction: "Standing at the threshold of modern times, Francis Bacon saw in experimental science and technological innovation the keys to humanity’s future. Human history to that point, he thought, was an endlessly repeated cycle of despair and false hopes. The false hopes were fed by the old illusion that a few cheap tricks and the right magical formulas would unlock nature’s treasury where unlimited wealth and power lay. The despair arose from humanity’s seeming inability to escape from subjection to the natural forces that periodically visited famine, disease, pestilence, and destruction upon it."