English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    50/392 (page 34)
    by 4 simple enumeration ’ of the instances which appear to favour the conception or theory adopted, and fails to take account of the 4 negative instances,’ or those which, if they had been attended to, would have led to its rejection. For this ‘childish’ type of induction Bacon substitutes a critical induction which is on the outlook for cases which contradict the theory suggested by a superficial acquaintance with the facts. 4 The induction which is to be available for the discovery and demonstra¬ tion of sciences and arts, must analyse nature by proper rejections and exclusions; and then, after a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirma¬ tive instances.’1 It is only to such a careful scrutiny of the facts that experience will yield the secret of the nature of things. If the 4 men of dogmas ’ or 4 reasoners ’ 4 resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance,’ the 4 men of experiment ’ are 4 like the ant : they only collect and use.’ Bacon finds the analogue of the true method in the example of the bee, which 4 takes 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 mechani¬ cal 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.’2 This reconciliation between a true rationalism and a true empiricism was clearly Bacon’s ambition from the first, and the source of peculiar satisfaction when he finally accomplished it. In a letter to Burghley in 1592 he writes : 4 If I could purge it [knowledge] of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experi-