Tagline: You can't escape the laws of physics (Augustine1996).
Descriptive version: No amount of being clever will allow your system to violate the laws of physics.
Prescriptive version: You can't change the laws of physics; use them, obey them, but don't think for a moment that as an engineer or architect that you can escape them.
Discussion: This is one of the principles which reflects my background, with my undergraduate degree being in physics. I spent the better part of five years (I started in graduate school and decided it was not for me at the time) studying how the universe worked, the models that explained why things happened all around us. As you know, this attempt to understand the universe is very much related to engineering, but in some ways very different than engineering. Engineering seems to be more about, given the set of laws that govern the workings of the universe, how can we (engineers) leverage them to affect the world around us. It is very tempting to confuse this ability to "engineer" the world with the ability to "engineer" the laws of physics. Falling into this confusion would likely lead to very undesirable consequences.
Citation
N. R. Augustine. 1996 Woodru ff Distinguished Lecture Transcript. http://sunnyday.mit.edu/16.355/Augustine.htm, 1996. section title Conceptual Brilliance Doesnt Blind the Laws of Physics.
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