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Scientia potentia est
open-in-new
<p>The phrase "<i>scientia potentia est</i>" (or "<i>scientia est potentia</i>" or also "<i>scientia potestas est</i>") is a <a href="/facts/Latin/pM3Kge85">Latin</a> <a href="/facts/Aphorism/hYudG9yF">aphorism</a> meaning "knowledge is power", commonly attributed to <a href="/facts/Sir_Francis_Bacon/qMJoNMRB">Sir Francis Bacon</a>. The expression "<i>ipsa scientia potestas est</i>" ('knowledge itself is power') occurs in Bacon's <i>Meditationes Sacrae</i> (1597). The exact phrase "<i>scientia potentia est</i>" (knowledge is power) was written for the first time in the 1668 version of <i><a href="/facts/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)/yQg5CHvV">Leviathan</a></i> by <a href="/facts/Thomas_Hobbes/VUGt3jNW">Thomas Hobbes</a>, who was a secretary to Bacon as a young man. The related phrase "<i>sapientia est potentia</i>" is often translated as "wisdom is power". In the modern and contemporary inquiries of the proposition, <a href="/facts/Stephen_Gill_(political_scientist)/aSeRpvHk">Stephen Gill</a> furthered <a href="/facts/Robert_W._Cox/23aykTXK">Robert Cox</a>'s deconstructive statement on the <a href="/facts/Ontology/QJKTsEIJ">ontology</a> of knowledge, with an <a href="/facts/Epistemology/NsDwpcYH">objective epistemological</a> statement that "any theory of knowledge production needs to have a power dimension". </p>