| Instauratio magna (Novum organum) | |
| 1620 |  |
| Francis Bacon(1561-1626) | |
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For the a various innovational attempts in natural science and the technology which has ceaselessly been developed since the Renaissance, this great work provided a firm philosophical basis, unifying them as a new system. Bacon scorned all authoritative preconceptions even those of Aristotele’s, maintaining that the basis of science must be facts obtained empirically through the accumulation of precise observations and experiments. He was certain that all theories of natural science, namely the natural law, should be inductively reasoned, and that nature must operate through these theories. Bacon also defined the leading aim of natural science as the enrichment of life, and emphasizing the utility of science, considered that accomplished by the control and operation of nature. It can be seen clearly in his dictum “Scientia est Potentia”, that “force” means the capacity for dominating nature. He enhanced the image of natural science which had been considered inferior to metaphysical learning. Nevertheless, it is a wonder that Beacon ignored the contributions of great contemporary scientists such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and especially his fellow countrymen, Gilbert, and Hervey, Beacon’s physician and the founder of modern physiology, all of whom had actually practiced the experimental methodology which he advocated himself. He was not only unconcerned with the mathematical method, but did not even consider the process of abstraction and reduction, which was established by Galileo as a scientific method. After all, Bacon, who was the chancellor o James I, and a shrewd self-serving opportunist, was not a scientist himself, but the first brilliant philosopher of science. He did not propose any scientific theories, but organized methodological principles which were unconsciously but practiced by Galileo and others into a new methodological system. |
