Novum organum : $b or, True suggestions for the interpretation of natureBacon, Francis
Philosophy
Novum organum : $b or, True suggestions for the interpretation of nature
Bacon, Francis
Induction (Logic) -- Early works to 1800; Science -- Methodology -- Early works to 1800
Again, out of these twenty-seven instances, some must be collected
immediately, without waiting for a particular investigation of
properties. Such are the similar, singular, deviating, and bordering
instances, those of power, and of the gate, and suggesting, generally
useful, and magical instances; for these either assist and cure
the understanding and senses, or furnish our general practice. The
remainder are to be collected when we finish our synoptical tables for
the work of the interpreter, upon any particular nature; for these
instances, honored and gifted with such prerogatives, are like the
soul amid the vulgar crowd of instances, and (as we from the first
observed) a few of them are worth a multitude of the others. When,
therefore, we are forming our tables they must be searched out with the
greatest zeal, and placed in the table. And, since mention must be made
of them in what follows, a treatise upon their nature has necessarily
been prefixed. We must next, however, proceed to the supports and
corrections of induction, and thence to concretes, the latent process,
and latent conformations, and the other matters, which we have
enumerated in their order in the twenty-first aphorism, in order that,
like good and faithful guardians, we may yield up their fortune to
mankind upon the emancipation and majority of their understanding;
from which must necessarily follow an improvement of their estate, and
an increase of their power over nature. For man, by the fall, lost
at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both
of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by
religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation
did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in
consequence of the Divine decree, “in the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat bread,” she is compelled by our labors (not assuredly by our
disputes or magical ceremonies), at length, to afford mankind in some
degree his bread, that is to say, to supply man’s daily wants.
END OF “NOVUM ORGANUM”
FOOTNOTES
[71] Τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι, or ἦν οὐσία of Aristotle.--See lib. iii. Metap.
[72] These divisions are from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where they are
termed, 1. ὓλη ἢ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. 2. τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι. 3. ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς
κινήσεως. 4. τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν--καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν.
[73] See Aphorism li. and second paragraph of Aphorism lxv. in the
first book.
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