Baconian method Quick reference
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
... method The method of induction advocated by Francis Bacon , especially in Part II of the Novum Organon . The aim of science is to establish laws; for this purpose an exhaustive enumeration of instances of phenomena, together with the way in which they vary, and the occurrence of negative instances, must be made. Experiments then test the results that emerge. The method is a forerunner of Mill's methods . It is sometimes erroneously supposed that the Baconian method is confined to simple enumeration of instances selected in a mechanical fashion, and...
Baconian method
The Antiquarian Tradition Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...and other planters, was the first study of natural history to make careful and exact observations of a particular part of Britain. The Baconian approach also liberated archaeological studies from a dependence on literary sources. John Aubrey , a Fellow of the Royal Society who had begun collecting observations on antiquities and natural history in the 1630s, and who made a famous survey of Stonehenge, illustrates this new method of study, though he was notoriously disorganized and credulous. In 1685 he compiled a Naturall Historie of Wiltshire , whose...
Natural Philosophy (Science) Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
... described as the rise of Baconian experimental sciences, such as chemistry and electricity—a tradition of enquiry that had not been fully integrated within the mathematical work of Newton. Though Coleridge, like Priestley, eventually became a sharp critic of Newtonianism, his earliest interest in natural philosophy was still essentially orthodox. The harmony of the mathematical laws of nature attracted him, and he was also enthusiastic about the efforts of Priestley and David Hartley ( 1705–57 ) to carry Newton's philosophical method into the study of the...
Enlightenment Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...Revolution, the scientific community was alarmed by the association of science with Dissent and reform politics. The English Enlightenment had always had an important gentlemanly element; at its most high-minded this involved a keen amateur dimension of science committed to a Baconian belief in the value of experimentation and observation. This naturally conservative dimension was strengthened under the long tenure of Sir Joseph Banks as president of the Royal Society. Banks was anxious to uphold the constitution in Church and state: he opposed the repeal of...
observation
Francis Bacon
Baconian philosophy Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
... philosophy Inductive philosophy as formulated by Francis Bacon ( 1561–1626 ) in the second book of the Novum Organum ( 1620 ). It stresses the importance of experimentation and observation as the necessary basis for theorizing about natural phenomena, and underpins modern scientific method. Bacon did not invent it but gave it a new importance. Baconian theory See shakespeare, william...
Baconianism Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...basis of modern science. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the hypothetical-deductive model of scientific method gained dominance. The connection between Newtonian science and Baconian method was denied. By the twentieth century, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper criticized Baconianism as a naïve and mistaken inductivism with no relationship to modern science. Conversely, Baconianism has also been blamed for the materialism of modern Western science. Although Bacon's ideas existed within a clear religious frame-work, in many...
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) Reference library
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)
...Francis ( 1561–1626 ). English statesman and philosopher; Bacon counts as one of the first English empiricists and was a supporter of the inductive method (the “Baconian” method). He produced a strong critique of ordinary language, which he saw as a product of convention likely to lead to false classifications and analyses. Because of this, he was seen as an inspiration in the 17th-century search for a universal language. See also History of Linguistics Anna Morpurgo...
Baconianism Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...this method would put knowledge to the service of humanity: “human Knowledge and human Power do really meet in one.” Bacon presented his method in New Organon ( 1620 ), which he intended to replace Aristotle ' logic books known as the Organon . The method is induction. Bacon argued that the deductive Aristotelian syllogism was dry and barren. To use it, one had first to jump immediately from casual experience to general principles. General principles, Bacon countered, themselves must derive from an exhaustive survey of experience via induction. Baconian...
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
...first writer to try to delineate the proper methods of successful science, to enable science to become a craft or industry producing benefits for humanity rather than the haphazard pursuit of occasional eccentrics. Although the ‘Baconian method’ is sometimes identified with simple induction by enumeration (the generalizing from instances of phenomena to experimental laws), in fact Bacon provided a sophisticated taxonomy of scientific methods, in most respects anticipating such later results as Mill 's methods, and certainly including an understanding that...
Shakespeare, William Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
...to produce such writings was Francis Bacon . Thus the Baconian theory began its lengthy career. In 1887 Ignatius Donnelly , a former senator of Minnesota, published The Great Cryptogram , which professed to show that cryptograms in the plays revealed Bacon as the undoubted author. The cryptographic method was further advanced by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence in Bacon is Shakespeare ( 1910 ), where he claimed that the all-revealing cryptic word was honorificabilitudinitatibus . The Baconians still persist and others have put forward many additional...
Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam, 1st Viscount St Albans (1561–1626) Reference library
David Knight
The Oxford Companion to British History (2 ed.)
...in the 1790s saw Baconian science as safe; the French philosophes had been led into dangerous speculation, and had brought atheism and revolution upon their country. Baconian induction lay behind the public health measures of the 19th cent., and John Stuart Mill sought to formalize his methods in his System of Logic of 1843 . All efforts to show that inductive inference can bring certainty seem, however, to have failed; and in the 20th cent., while Baconian induction was often taught to schoolchildren as ‘the scientific method’, it fell out of...
Tyler, Samuel (1809–77) Reference library
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
...most famously, in the thought of David Hume and Thomas Reid who in turn were influenced by Francis Bacon . In 1844 Tyler wrote his first major work, A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy , where he expressly sought to present the Baconian philosophy to an English-speaking audience more thoroughly than had ever been done before. He argued that Bacon’s inductive method for coming to understanding allows, for the first time, the establishment of a “true practical philosophy” and, in doing so, rectifies the “evils of the ancient philosophy” ( 1844 ,...
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
...mystery and individual faith, thereby clearing the way for the unimpeded advance of modern science. Primary Sources Bacon, Francis . The New Organon and Related Writings . New York, 1960. ——. Essays . London, 1994. ——. Novum Organum . Chicago, 1994. Secondary Sources Baconianism. In Dictionary of the History of Ideas , vol. 1, pp. 172–179. New York, 1973. Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm , ed. Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon . Hamm, Germany, 1970–. See vol. 1, pp. 330–331. Blumberg, Hans . The Legitimacy of the Modern Age . Cambridge, Mass.,...
Aubrey, John (1626–97) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...official ideology of the Royal Society was Baconian, emphasizing the importance of the method of ‘Natural History’, the careful gathering and recording of facts before any theorizing is attempted. So Aubrey, as he rode around the counties of Southern England, would compile notes alike on natural features (soil, climate, flora and fauna) and on human remains (stone circles, barrows, Roman and medieval ruins). Many of the Fellows of the early Royal Society shared this combination of interests and this ‘botanizing’ method. What was distinctive of Aubrey was his...
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...were John Comenius , John Dury and, above all, Samuel Hartlib , whose mercantilist-imperialist Baconianism promoted schemes for institutionalizing the production and exchange of scientific and technological knowledge, schemes which aligned Hartlib with individuals who became founder members of the Royal Society . His approach to epis-temology was broadly Baconian in some of its essentials and had much in common with the natural-historical Baconianism of Ralph Austen , John Evelyn , William Petty , John Graunt , Robert Hooke and Robert Plot ....
Gregory, John (1724–73) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...advantages associated with aristocratic patronage but also the important connection between gentlemanly and scientific status. As Gregory 's Lectures indicate, it was in the circles of educated gentlemen that the ‘new science’ was born and the Baconian and Newtonian gospel disseminated. Gregory's Baconian reform of medicine included a proposal for the ‘laying open of medicine’, which, he argued, could only be advanced with the co-operation and patronage of scientifically inclined, liberally educated members of the higher classes. It was in this alliance...
Cohen, Laurence Jonathan (1923) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...On the basis of this claim, Cohen advocates a pluralist view of probability. Just as there are different types of provability, there are also different types of probability, among them relative frequency, personalist, propensity and Cohen's favored ‘Baconian’ inductive logic, which he terms the ‘method of relevant variables’. Cohen sees the history of the philosophy of induction as involving primarily two distinct traditions. One tradition, the one that Cohen wishes largely to supplant, has its roots in Pascal's writings on probability, and is perhaps...
