Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Novum Organum - Bacon

Francis Bacon wrote 'Novum Organum' as a kind of response to Aristotle's 'Organum' which deals with logic.  Bacon wrote his 'new' piece in large part to question how we prove things. 
Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm than spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own.
This is a reaction to the way that science was seen as established and permanent.  The works of Aristotle (especially) and others were held as settled science and no real effort could be made to question them.  Bacon sought to change that.
I propose to establish progressing stages of certainty. The evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction which follows the the act of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from simple sensuous perception.
From this, Bacon launched the scientific method and this created an enormous bloom of science. 

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