Such a logic could not avoid having for its salient features definition
of what is already known (or thought to be known), and its
systematization according to recognized canons of orthodoxy. A logic of
discovery on the other hand looks to the future. Received truth it
regards critically as something to be tested by new experiences rather
than as something to be dogmatically taught and obediently received. Its
chief interest in even the most carefully tested ready-made knowledge is
the use which may be made of it in further inquiries and discoveries.
Old truth has its chief value in assisting the detection of new truth.
Bacon's own appreciation of the nature of induction was highly
defective. But his acute sense that science means invasion of the
unknown, rather than repetition in logical form of the already known,
makes him nevertheless the father of induction. Endless and persistent
uncovering of facts and principles not known--such is the true spirit of
induction. Continued progress in knowledge is the only sure way of
protecting old knowledge from degeneration into dogmatic doctrines
received on authority, or from imperceptible decay into superstition and
old wives' tales.
Ever-renewed progress is to Bacon the test as well as the aim of genuine
logic. Where, Bacon constantly demands, where are the works, the fruits,
of the older logic? What has it done to ameliorate the evils of life, to
rectify defects, to improve conditions? Where are the inventions that
justify its claim to be in possession of truth? Beyond the victory of
man over man in law courts, diplomacy and political administration, they
are nil. One had to turn from admired "sciences" to despised arts to
find works, fruits, consequences of value to human kind through power
over natural forces. And progress in the arts was as yet intermittent,
fitful, accidental. A true logic or technique of inquiry would make
advance in the industrial, agricultural and medical arts continuous,
cumulative and deliberately systematic.
If we take into account the supposed body of ready-made knowledge upon
which learned men rested in supine acquiescence and which they recited
in parrot-like chorus, we find it consists of two parts. One of these
parts is made up of the errors of our ancestors, musty with antiquity
and organized into pseudo-science through the use of the classic logic.
Such "truths" are in fact only the systematized mistakes and prejudices
of our ancestors. Many of them originated in accident; many in class
interest and bias, perpetuated by authority for this very reason--a
consideration which later actuated Locke's attack upon the doctrine of
innate ideas. The other portion of accepted beliefs comes from
instinctive tendencies of the human mind that give it a dangerous bias
until counteracted by a conscious and critical logic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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