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Background
Background
As we have seen, in Novum Organum, Francis Bacon argued that the aim of the scientific method is to establish the true forms, which he understood as the universal laws that govern things. The question he now had to answer was how do we do that? How do we find and establish the ‘true forms’ of things?
It was his answer to this question which would result in Bacon being called the Father of Empiricism.
Rationalism or Empiricism
Rationalism or Empiricism
Bacon thought that there were two main possibilities: we either do this through the methods of logic or we do it using the information we get from our senses.
He rejected the idea of using logic because he thought that, since logic is reasoning with words, and words are representations of badly defined concepts, this wasn’t the way to establish the Universal Laws he was aiming for.
That left him with the methods that use the senses, of which there were also two: the method of generalising straight from a particular case to a general theory, and what he calls true induction. Induction is the method of going from particular cases to general rules (as opposed to deduction, which is the method of going from general rules to particular cases), so both of these methods of the senses are inductive. However, the first method he believes is false induction.
The first inductive method is the method of generalising straight from a particular case to a general theory. For example, we might think something like, ‘I ate a carrot last Tuesday and it made me ill, therefore carrots make me ill.’ The problem with this approach is that it ignores other cases, specifically cases where this new theory doesn’t work. (Perhaps, you’re ignoring the fact that you ate a carrot on Sunday and you were fine, or the fact that you also drank petrol on Tuesday.) So, this method can’t be what Francis Bacon is looking for either, since the theories and laws it produces aren’t universal.
For Francis Bacon, the only method that’s of any use is what he calls ‘True Induction’. In the method of true induction, we slowly and carefully record a set of observations, and through this process we eliminate bad ideas.
Bacon describes how, in true induction, we go through three stages of analysing a phenomenon: For example, if we wanted to find the true form of heat, we would firstly, record the cases of when heat is present. Secondly, we should look at cases of when heat doesn’t occur, and thirdly, we should look at cases when it is present in different degrees.
Bacon was one of the first people to realise that the negative cases (the cases where a phenomenon does not occur) are actually more important than the cases where it does. This is because scientific theories cannot be proven (because we cannot experience every case of a phenomenon) they can only be disproven or falsified.
As a result of this, Bacon was aware that we may never arrive at the true forms of a phenomenon or a concept, instead we can only improve on previous theories in small steps, and hopefully get closer to the truth.
We can summarise Bacon’s thinking in the following diagram:
Discussion
Discussion
Superficially, this seems to make sense, but later on, we'll learn about someone called Descartes argued for the opposite.
He described himself trying to establish what he can know of the wax-itself from his senses alone. His problem is this: all that is perceived of the wax are its various properties – its shape, colour, smell, - but as the wax melts, these properties appear to be continually changing; none of them appear to be essential. And so, what then can we learn about wax from observation if none of its properties are essential to it? The essence of wax remains unknown. We can summarise his argument as follows:
The essence of a substance is its unchanging properties.
All of the properties that I can sense are changing.
∴ The essence of a substance cannot be known through my senses.
This objection outlines a problematic aspect to Bacon's argument.
Tasks
Tasks
Explain Bacon's argument:
Explain why Bacon rejected using methods of Logic in science.
Explain why Bacon rejected the method of generalising from a particular case to a general theory.
Explain Bacon’s concept of true induction.
Give one objection to Bacon's position
Evaluate Bacon’s ideas about the scientific method. Support your judgments.
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