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.

    63/392 (page 47)
    reasoning, regards such an application of mathematics as a mere 4 supplement ’ to the true science of astronomy. He speaks of specialisation like that of Gilbert (almost the only one of his contemporaries whom he mentions) as if it implied such a narrowness of outlook as disqualified those who practised it from taking a philosophical view of things, and he thinks Gilbert in danger of 4 becoming a magnet.’ In both these respects the subsequent course of scientific discovery has justified his contemporaries, and condemned Bacon. The truth is, as we have already seen, that Bacon belonged as much to the Scholastic as to the modern age. His place is that of a transition-thinker, and this constitutes the importance of his work, while it at the same time limits the possibilities of his achievement. The terms which he constantly uses in speaking of material phenomena are specially significant of this intermediate position. He speaks of the 4 appetites ’ and 4 desires ’ of things, of 4 appetites which aim at a private good ’ and 4 appetites which aim at a more public good,’ of‘bodies delighting in motion,’ of ‘spirits’ where we should speak of 4 forces.’ With all his impatience of the 4 superstitions ’ of the Schoolmen, he is himself too much of a Schoolman to abandon their characteristic modes of thought and speech. With all his scientific ardour, he is the author rather of an impressive statement, or series of statements, of the scientific ideal of his age than of the method of realising that ideal. The influence which he exerted on the scientific thought of his own and of succeeding ages was that rather of a prophet than of a teacher; he gave articulate expression to their own ideal, he did not really direct them in the realisation of that ideal. How great that influence was may be gathered from the fact that, as Fowler says, 4 the foundation of the Royal Society in England, and possibly also that of similar societies on the Continent, was due to the impulse given by Bacon to the study of experimental science and the plans which he devised for its prosecution,’1 and that in the words of 1 Introd. to Nov. Org., p. ii6.