On the threefold birth of the scientific method (1): Francis Bacon

Although science was not born in the seventeenth century (since the need for reliable information about the environment is intrinsic to any human society, and disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, or biology had already flourished splendidly in Classical Antiquity), we cannot deny that around the year 1600 the history of humanity crossed a decisive threshold toward the exponential growth of scientific knowledge. One precondition for making that enormous leap had been the colonization of America during the previous century, which convinced many Europeans that there were fundamental facts about the world that the ancient Greek sages had completely ignored, and that, therefore, perhaps one should not place too much trust in the cosmology of an Aristotle or a Ptolemy. This loss of confidence in theories and concepts inherited from Antiquity, together with the need to understand and enhance the industrial and technological progress that was taking place thanks to rivalry among European powers, caused scientific research from then on to experience unparalleled growth: the Scientific Revolution had been born.

For the pioneers of that revolution, it was clear that the massive and systematic acquisition of this new knowledge required not only questioning much of what was taught at universities at the time (though not everything—for example, Euclid’s geometry continued to be accepted as an unsurpassable pinnacle of knowledge), but also paying special attention to the procedures (that is, the methods) by which discoveries worthy of the name could be achieved. Reflection and debate on scientific methods therefore became one of the fundamental elements of the kind of thought that would soon be called “modern” (as opposed to “ancient”). In particular, three of the greatest giants of this new way of thinking—Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), and René Descartes (1596–1650)—devoted much of their intellectual effort to developing and discussing a set of strategies that would eventually become known as the scientific method.

This expression, although we use it in the singular, should not be understood as referring to a kind of single ‘algorithm’ that turns empirical data into physical laws or something of that sort, but rather to a family or conglomerate of practical rules that are not always definable with complete precision and are often not entirely compatible with one another. “The” scientific method is in reality a fairly heterogeneous sum of “methods,” much as “Mediterranean cuisine” or “Baroque music” include notably varied ingredients, recipes, and compositions. The profound differences between the “methods” defended by Bacon, Galilei, and Descartes are the best proof of this deep diversity. We will examine the most essential elements of their proposals in this and the following entries, but just to summarize: Bacon defended something like the inductive method; Descartes something like the deductive method; and Galilei something like the experimental method. Though these are usually interpreted as mutually contradictory views, the truth is probably closer to the idea that, being “the” scientific method not one single thing, each author pointed to an essential but partial aspect of the conglomerate of practices characterizing the new way of getting knowledge.

We shall start with the Englishman Francis Bacon, who of the three was the one who made the fewest contributions to scientific research proper (his political activity left him little time for that). As I have mentioned, Bacon advocated the application of what we now call the inductive method (though, perhaps, if he had written four centuries later, he would have called it “the statistical method”). In his work Novum Organum (the Organon—“instrument”—was the compendium of Aristotle’s books on logic), he promoted the systematic accumulation of data to investigate a given phenomenon (for example, rain). These data were to be collected in three distinct series: a table of presence (under what conditions rain occurs), a table of absence (under what conditions it does not rain), and—much more important and novel—a table of degrees (which conditions are such that when they vary by a certain degree, the amount of rainfall also varies, and to what degree it does).

Equally importantly, Bacon envisioned and proclaimed that, in order to guarantee the completeness and systematic nature of such data, an essential factor was that their collection and analysis could not depend on a single well-intentioned individual, but required institutions charged with this task and collaborating with one another in different parts of the world. Science is, for Bacon, an essentially collective and cooperative enterprise, requiring the commitment and resources of a whole society, not only of isolated individuals. In this way, even more than the scientific method, we owe to Bacon the very idea of science policy, along with what was perhaps his most important intuition of all: that knowing exactly how nature works is the only way to be able to control it for our benefit. Scientific knowledge is power, and therefore something to which political power must devote special attention and resources. It is no accident that the new institutional architecture that science was given in the main European countries during the following centuries (starting with the creation of the English Royal Society) was deeply and explicitly influenced by Bacon’s ideas.

Lastly, Francis Bacon also understood that the human mind is systematically biased in ways that prevent the attainment of objective knowledge. He famously called “idols” these biases, and classified them accordingly to the aspect of the human psychology more responsible of their working, either biological (idols of the tribe, i.e., those depending on the mere human nature), individual (idols of the cave, depending on the specificities of each people’s character or personal history and education), or self-serving (idols of the forum, or of the marketplace, depending on the clashing of different material interests), or cultural (idols of the theater, i.e., the influence of the cultural dogmas prevalent in each society). The most essential aspect of the scientific method(s) would consist, hence, in how we collectively try to counterweight the influence of all these types of prejudice, and this is also a fundamental reason why science is, for Bacon onwards, intrinsically a collective, cooperative, and competitive enterprise.

References

Francis Bacon: The New Organon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.