This approach can only generate feelings of sorrow and compassion

Heh. From Advice for A Young Investigator by Santiago Ramón y Cajal published in 1897.

His introduction is a reminder of how far some, preoccupied with emotionalism and postmodernism, have drifted from reality.

I shall assume that the reader’s general education and background in philosophy are sufficient to understand that the major sources of knowledge include observation, experiment, and reasoning by induction and deduction.

Instead of elaborating on accepted principles, let us simply point out that for the last hundred years the natural sciences have abandoned completely the Aristotelian principles of intuition, inspiration, and dogmatism.

The unique method of reflection indulged in by the Pythagoreans and followers of Plato (and pursued in modern times by Descartes, Fichte, Krause, Hegel, and more recently at least partly by Bergson) involves exploring one’s own mind or soul to discover universal laws and solutions to the great secrets of life. Today this approach can only generate feelings of sorrow and compassion—the latter because of talent wasted in the pursuit of chimeras, and the former because of all the time and work so pitifully squandered.

The history of civilization proves beyond doubt just how sterile the repeated attempts of metaphysics to guess at nature’s laws have been. Instead, there is every reason to believe that when the human intellect ignores reality and concentrates within, it can no longer explain the simplest inner workings of life’s machinery or of the world around us.