They have but this tends to be riskier if you are doing the same thing, this is why the average person follows the rules/systemwhich is a safer option. The people who bent the rules are also exceptions while the norm isn't. (I personally like to bend rules)
Answer:
Each new step in science reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts as merely the various manifestations of a single principle.
Explanation:
Even though the only context we have is the sentence itself, we can safely choose number 2. This type of sentence is used when we wish to present contrasting ideas. There would be no reason, for example, for science to unify what is already harmonious, or to undermine what is already erroneous. Those ideas are redundant. It makes much more sense to say that science reconciles facts that are seemingly discordant. That is the wonder in science: to see different things as the manifestations of a single principle, which could seem, if science did not exist, impossible.
I think this is an epithet convention.
