It's also important not to put too much faith into ancient sayings and aphorisms.

As a civilization, we are currently brushing up against the physics of efficiency. In many areas we have achieved close to what is theoretically possible, based on physics.

Such was not the case for the majority of human existence.

The body of research a.k.a. "writings of the ancients" is now insurmountably higher than it would have been during the time of ibn al-Haytham, when any kind of writing at all was scarce and literacy was low.