Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature

Name: Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature
Author: Bacon, Francis

Bacon, Francis

Science -- Methodology

| profit of human science. And the
                                           | Chancellor proclaims that he has
                                           | achieved his aim, if posterity
                                           | acknowledges that, even if he has
                                           | failed to discover new truths or
                                           | produce new works, he will have built
                                           | the means to discover such truths or
                                           | to produce such works (III, 520). He
                                           | insists that his method has nothing
                                           | to do with the old one nor does it
                                           | try to improve it. And he puts out
                                           | the choice in these terms:
                                           |
                                           | There are and can be only two ways of
                                           | searching into and discovering truth.
                                           | The one flies from the senses and
                                           | particulars to the most general
                                           | axioms, and from these principles,
                                           | the truth of which it takes tor
                                           | settled and immoveable, proceeds to
                                           | judgment and to the discovery of
                                           | middle axioms. And this way is now in
                                           | fashion. The other derives axioms
                                           | from the senses and particulars,
                                           | rising by a gradual and unbroken
                                           | ascent, so that it arrives at the
                                           | most general axioms last of all. This
                                           | is the true way, but as yet untried.
                                           | (IV, 50)
                                           |
                                           | When it is left to itself, the
                                           | understanding follows the first way,
                                           | hastily applies itself to reality and
                                           | generates ANTICIPATIONS OF NATURE.
                                           | But "that reason which is elicited
                                           | from facts by a just and
                                           | methodological process, I call
                                           | INTERPRETATION OF NATURE" (IV, 51).
                                           |

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature

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