Novum organum · Francis Bacon
FOOTNOTES
From the rapid development geometry received in their hands, they imagined the same method would lead to results equally brilliant in natural science, and snatching up some abstract principle, which they carefully removed from the test of experiment, imagined they could reason out from it all the laws and external appearances of the universe. The scholastics were impelled along the same path, not only by precedent, but by profession. Theology was the only science which received from them a consistent development, and the _à priori_ grounds on which it rested prevented them from employing any other method in the pursuit of natural phenomena. Thus, forms of demonstration, in themselves accurate, and of momentous value in their proper sphere, became confounded with fable, and led men into the idea they were exploring truth when they were only accurately deducing error from error. One principle ever so slightly deflected, like a false quantity in an equation, could be sufficient to infect the whole series of conclusions of which it was the base; and though the philosopher might subsequently deduce a thousand consecutive inferences with the utmost accuracy or precision, he would only succeed in drawing out very methodically nine hundred and ninety-nine errors.--_Ed._
The scholastics, it is true, abused the deductive syllogism, by employing it in its naked, skeleton-like form, and confounding it with the whole breadth of logical theory; but their errors are not to be visited on Aristotle, who never dreamed of playing with formal syllogisms, and, least of all, mistook the descending for the ascending series of inference. In our mind we are of accord with the Stagyrite, who propounds, as far as we can interpret him, two modes of investigating truth--the one by which we ascend from particular and singular facts to general laws and axioms, and the other by which we descend from universal propositions to the individual cases which they virtually include. Logic, therefore, must equally vindicate the formal purity of the synthetic illation by which it ascends to the whole, as the analytic process by which it descends to the parts. The deductive and inductive syllogism are of equal significance in building up any body of truth, and whoever restricts logic to either process, mistakes one-half of its province for the whole; and if he acts upon his error, will paralyze his methods, and strike the noblest part of science with sterility.--_Ed._ [6] The Latin is, _ad ea quæ revera sunt naturæ notiora_. This expression, _naturæ notiora_, _naturæ notior_, is so frequently employed by Bacon, that we may conclude it to point to some distinguishing feature in the Baconian physics. It properly refers to the most evident principles and laws of nature, and springs from that system which regards the material universe as endowed with intelligence, and acting according to rules either fashioned or clearly understood by itself.--_Ed._
Carneades, born about 215, died in 130. He attached himself to Chrysippus, and sustained with _éclat_ the scepticism of the academy. The Athenians sent him with Critolaus and Diogenes as ambassador to Rome, where he attracted the attention of his new auditory by the subtilty of his reasoning, and the fluency and vehemence of his language. Before Galba and Cato the Censor, he harangued with great variety of thought and copiousness of diction in praise of justice. The next day, to establish his doctrine of the uncertainty of human knowledge, he undertook to refute all his arguments. He maintained with the New Academy, that the senses, the imagination, and the understanding frequently deceive us, and therefore cannot be infallible judges of truth, but that from the impressions produced on the mind by means of the senses, we infer appearances of truth or probabilities. Nevertheless, with respect to the conduct of life, Carneades held that probable opinions are a sufficient guide. Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, of Colophon, born in 556, the founder of the Eleatic school, which owes its fame principally to Parmenides. Wild in his opinions about astronomy, he supposed that the stars were extinguished every morning, and rekindled at night; that eclipses were occasioned by the temporary extinction of the sun, and that there were several suns for the convenience of the different climates of the earth. Yet this man held the chair of philosophy at Athens for seventy years.
Philolaus, a Pythagorean philosopher of Crotona, B.C. 374. He first supported the diurnal motion of the earth round its axis, and its annual motion round the sun. Cicero (Acad. iv. 39) has ascribed this opinion to the Syracusan philosopher Nicetas, and likewise to Plato. From this passage, it is most probable that Copernicus got the idea of the system he afterward established. Bacon, in the Advancement of Human Learning, charges Gilbert with restoring the doctrines of Philolaus, because he ventured to support the Copernican theory.--_Ed._ [38] Bacon is equally conspicuous for the use and abuse of analogical illustrations. The levity, as Stuart Mill very properly observes, by which substances float on a stream, and the levity which is synonymous with worthlessness, have nothing beside the name in common; and to show how little value there is in the figure, we need only change the word into buoyancy, to turn the semblance of Bacon’s argument against himself.--_Ed._ [39] We have before observed, that the New Academy did not profess skepticism, but the ἀκατάληψια, or incomprehensibility of the absolute essences of things. Even modern physicists are not wanting, to assert with this school that the utmost knowledge we can obtain is relative, and necessarily short of absolute certainty. It is not without an appearance of truth that these philosophers maintain that our ideas and perceptions do not express the nature of the things which they represent, but only the effects of the peculiar organs by which they are conveyed to the understanding, so that were these organs changed, we should have different conceptions of their nature. That constitution of air which is dark to man is luminous to bats and owls.
Severinus, born in Jutland, in 1529, published an attack on Aristotle’s natural history, but adopted fantasies which the Stagyrite ridiculed in his own day. He was a follower of Paracelsus, a Swiss enthusiast of the fifteenth century, who ignored the ancient doctrine of the four elements for salt, sulphur and mercury, and allied chemistry and medicine with mysticism.--_Ed._ [64] Bacon’s apology is sound, and completely answers those German and French critics, who have refused him a niche in the philosophical pantheon. One German commentator, too modest to reveal his name, accuses Bacon of ignorance of the calculus, though, in his day, Wallis had not yet stumbled upon the laws of continuous fractions; while Count de Maistre, in a coarse attack upon his genius, expresses his astonishment at finding Bacon unacquainted with discoveries which were not heard of till a century after his death.--_Ed._ [65] Philip of Macedon. [66] See Plato’s Timæus. [67] The saying of Philocrates when he differed from Demosthenes.--_Ed._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.