I was ruminating that whereas Descartes is often taken for the father of modern science, or, one of the main fathers thereof, if my intuition is correct about his epigram, there is much more to it than that. This confirms my intuition, which was compelled by Descartes' epigram, above. There are, in general, two lines of thought in Western Civilization. One derives from Plato and is called Realism. The other derives from Aristotle and is called Nominalism.
Modern science is solidly in the line of nominalism.
This is the view that nothing exists excepting what one experiences, and, what is real is the individual cognition and experience only. The only esssence is existence. There is nothing excepting this existence, no essence qua essence that can be distinguished from existence. Reality is what you experience through the five senses and their mechanical intensifiers and nothing else. Realism is the view that what exists are the ideas of things, what Plato calls essences.