“statuuntque latiores terminos scientiae Dei quam potestatis,
vel potius ejus partis potestatis Dei (nam et ipsa scientia potestas est)
qua scit, quam ejus qua movet et agit:
ut praesciat quaedam otiose, quae non praedestinet et praeordinet”
Francis Bacon, 1597
“and they set wider limits for the knowledge of God than for power,
or rather for that part of God’s power (for knowledge itself is power)
by which he knows, than that by which he moves and acts”
Google Translate

“scientia potentia est“
Thomas Hobbes, 1668

E=mc2
Einstein, 1905

In fact, power produces; it produces reality;
it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.
Michel Foucault, 1991

“They” – as in ‘the knowing people’ – ‘set the limits for the knowledge of God’.
Then it was ‘they’ who had the real power over (their) God…

A little later, another thinker simplified the whole thing into ‘knowledge is power’.

Which, already collective, state of mind morphed into the socio-cultural environment into which Einstein was able to notice that E=mc2. That apparently different things can morph one into the other, given the right circumstances.

Which brings us to Foucault noticing that power produces reality. Including knowledge…

But is there a real difference between ‘power produces reality’ and ‘they set different limits for God’s knowledge than for God’s power’?
In fact, there is.

According to Foucault power is exercised directly.
According to Bacon, people exercise power by ‘fine tuning’ their ultimate tool. Their God. Which god, like all others, acts like an agent. Its powers might be limited – it is able to do/know only as much as those who have faith in it believe it to be able to know/do – but inside those limits it is as free as each of those who believe in it.

And the difference is huge.
As soon as Nietzsche had noticed that ‘God was dead’, ‘reality’ had shattered.
While God was alive, power created one reality. Also known as “God”.
As soon as there was no more God to mediate between reality and those gathering knowledge about it and exercising power while recreating it… reality became many!

And not only many versions of reality are competing for our attention, each of these realities are farther and farther away for the ‘hard’ one. The one harboring Einstein.

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.”

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: