Francis Bacon | The Modern Scientific Method

"Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world" Francis Bacon (1591-1626)

Best know works:

• Essays
• The Advancement of Learning
• New Organon (Novum Organum)

Bacon was instrumental in developing the modern, experimental scientific method. The young Francis Bacon was not much impressed by scholasticism that had dominated his education at university. The scholastics' approach made scientific inquiry largely an armchair enterprise. They spent the majority of their time pondering the works of Aristotle and constructing syllogistic arguments, and put little effort into actually observing the world around them.

Bacon considered this approach stultifying, and developed an alternative method of scientific inquiry firmly based on experiment and observation. He recommended scientists collect data and perform experiments in order to determine when phenomena are present and when they are absent.

Bacon himself conducted a number of such experiments, discovering, for example, that the rays emitted by the sun and by flames contain heat, whereas by the moon and stars do not.

The ultimate aim of science, thought Bacon, should be to establish the fundamental laws governing nature. He stressed that scientists should strive not only to prove their hyptheses by experiment, but also to disprove them. There is great value no only in finding evidence to support a hypothesis, but also in conslusively ruling hypothesis out.

Bacon also emphasized the importance of developing the right institutions for scientific research. Science, Bacon believed, is primarily a communal activity while research is a group effort. He attempted to set up a college specially equipped with laboratories in which scientists together could apply the new scientific method. Unfortunately, the necessary royal funding couldn't be found. However, a group of natural philosophers began to meet in the mid-1640s to discuss Bacon's ideas and this eventually led to the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660.

Bacon offers an engaging similie to illustrate how he believes science should progress. He does this in a brilliant fashion. The traditional metaphysicians, says Bacon, are like spiders spinning elaborate webs that float in the air, and all from material produced from within their own bodies. The empirics (like alchemists) are, by contrast, like ants, busily collecting material together but never producing anything from it. Scientists, says Bacon, should be like bees, which not only gather together new material, but also digest and transform it. The job of scientists is not only to amass data, important though as that is, but also to make something out of this material--they should aim to develop theories that will allow them to understand, explain and predict from what they observe. But what they make must remain firmly rooted in what they have observed.

Here is a quote from Bacon describing how science had previously been handled........"have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of expirement are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, which make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bees take a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped."

It is easy to forget that science, as we now understand it, is a comparatively recent development. After language, it may well be our greatest invention. The new approach to understanding the world that Bacon helped develop would, in the space of just 400 years, utterly transform our lives.

We can fail to recognize just how rapid scientific progress has been. In only four centuries we have discovered electricity, anaesthetics and antibiotics, developed computers and satellites, discovered the building blocks of matter and looked close to the edge of the universe; we have travelled to the bottom of the oceans, walked on the Moon, come to understand the basis of reproduction and how life evolved. Without the method Bacon helped develop, none of this would have happened.

Born 1561, in London, England. Bacon was born into a prominent and well-educated family. The youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, he went one to become one of the leading intellectuals in the courts of Elizabeth I and James I.

Home-tutored to the age of 12, Bacon then went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he stayed with his older brother, Anthony for three years. He travelled to Paris with the English ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet. Bacon's father died in 1579, leaving the 18 year old Bacon to take care of himself. Bacon studied law, and became a Member of Parliament in 1582. Under James I, he was knighted in 1603, married in 1606, became Solicitor General in 1607 and Attorney General in 1613. He topped off an illustrious career by becoming Lord Chancellor of England in 1618. Unfortunately, just four years later, Bacon was arrested under an unfair charge of corruption. He was found guilty, fined and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London. After his release, stripped of his titles and banned from public office, Bacon spent the remainder of his time studying and writing.

In 1626, while travelling through London in the snow, Bacon was struck by the thought that snow might be used to preserve meat. He and his companion got off their coach and bought a chicken that they proceeded to stuff with snow to see if the cold had a preservative effect. Perhaps as a result of his expirement, Bacon contracted pneumonia and died. But not before first eating the chicken. This incident neatly illustrates the importance that Bacon believes observation and expirement contribute to scientific knowledge. He died 1626, in London.