 Yet not everybody agreed.  Hobbes, for instance pointed out that human reason preceded experimental techniques and their application. He thought that human reasoning reveals to us the natural law, and criticized Boyle’s optimism regarding experimental method’s ability to reveal it (Shapin and Schaffer 1984). Doesn’t human reason guide experimenter’s actions, in the way it leads us to choose data and samples, and the way it allows us to interpret them, after all? If so, we should focus on the philosophical study of reason and theoretical scientific reasoning rather than on the study of experimental techniques and their applications.