a close union of observation and thought, of fact and Idea (law)--these
are the requirements made by Galileo and brilliantly fulfilled in his
discoveries; this, the "inductive speculation," as Dühring terms it, which
derives laws of far-reaching importance from inconspicuous facts; this,
as Galileo himself recognizes, the distinctive gift of the investigator.
Galileo anticipates Descartes in regard to the subjective character of
sense qualities and their reduction to quantitative distinctions,[2] while
he shares with him the belief in the typical character of mathematics and
the mechanical theory of the world. The truth of geometrical propositions
and demonstrations is as unconditionally certain for man as for God, only
that man learns them by a discursive process, whereas God's intuitive
understanding comprehends them with a glance and knows more of them than
man. The book of the universe is written in mathematical characters; motion
is the fundamental phenomenon in the world of matter; our knowledge reaches
as far as phenomena are measurable; the qualitative nature of force, back
of its quantitative determinations, remains unknown to us. When Galileo
maintains that the Copernican theory is philosophically true and not merely
astronomically useful, thus interpreting it as more than a hypothesis,
he is guided by the conviction that the simplest explanation is the most
probable one, that truth and beauty are one, as in general he concedes
a guiding though not a controlling influence in scientific work to the
aesthetic demand of the mind for order, harmony, and unity in nature, to
correspond to the wisdom of the Creator.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Natorp's essay on Galileo, in vol.
xviii. of the
_Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1882.]
[Footnote 1: This doctrine is developed by Galileo in the controversial
treatise against Padre Grassi, _The Scales (Il Saggiatore_, 1623, in the
Florence edition of his collected works, 1842 _seq_., vol. iv. pp.
149-369; cf. Natorp, _Descartes' Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882, chap. vi.). In
substance, moreover, this doctrine is found, as Heussler remarks, _Baco_,
p. 94, in Bacon himself, in _Valerius Terminus (Works_, Spedding, vol. iii.
pp. 217-252.)]
One of the most noted and influential among the contemporaries, countrymen,
and opponents of Descartes, was the priest and natural scientist, Petrus
Gassendi,[1] from 1633 Provost of Digne, later for a short period professor
of mathematics at Paris. His renewal of Epicureanism, to which he was
impelled by temperament, by his reverence for Lucretius, and by the
anti-Aristotelian tendency of his thinking, was of far more importance for
modern thought than the attempts to revive the ancient systems which have
been mentioned above (p. 29). Its superior influence depends on the fact
that, in the conception of atoms, it offered exact inquiry a most useful
point of attachment. The conflict between the Gassendists and the
Cartesians, which at first was a bitter one, centered, as far as physics
was concerned, around the value of the atomic hypothesis as contrasted with
the corpuscular and vortex theory which Descartes had opposed to it. It
soon became apparent, however, that these two thinkers followed along
essentially the same lines in the philosophy of nature, sharply as they
were opposed in their noëtical principles. Descartes'
doctrine of body is
conceived from an entirely materialistic standpoint, his anthropology,
indeed, going further than the principles of his system would allow.
Gassendi, on the other hand, recognizes an immaterial, immortal reason,
traces the origin of the world, its marvelous arrangement, and the
beginning of motion back to God, and, since the Bible so teaches, believes
the earth to be at rest,--holding that, for this reason, the decision must
be given in favor of Tycho Brahé and against Copernicus, although the
hypothesis of the latter affords the simpler and, scientifically, the more
probable explanation. Both thinkers rejoice in their agreement with the
dogmas of the Church, only that with Descartes it came unsought in the
natural progress of his thought, while Gassendi held to it in contradiction
to his system. It is the more surprising that Gassendi's works escaped
being put upon the Index, a fate which overtook those of Descartes in 1663.
[Footnote 2: Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655: _On the Life and Character of
Epicurus_, 1647; _Notes on the Tenth Book of Diogenes Laërtius, with a
Survey of the Doctrine of Epicurus_, 1649. _Works_, Lyons, 1658, Florence,
1727. Cf. Lange, _History of Materialism_, book i. § 3, chap, 1; Natorp,
_Analekten, Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xviii.
1882, p. 572 _seq_.]
As modern thought derives its mechanical temper equally from both these
sources, and the natural science of the day has appropriated the corpuscles
of Descartes under the name of molecules, as well as the atoms of Gassendi,
though not without considerable modification in both conceptions (Lange,
vol. i. p. 269), so we find attempts at mediation at an early period.
While Père Mersenne (1588-1648), who was well versed in physics, sought
an indecisive middle course between these two philosophers, the English
chemist, Robert Boyle, effected a successful synthesis of both. The son
of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, he was born at Lismore in 1626, lived in
literary retirement at Oxford from 1654, and later in Cambridge, and died,
1692, in London, president of the Royal Society. His principal work, _The
Sceptical Chemist (Works_, vol. i. p. 290 _seq_.), appeared in 1661, the
tract, _De Ipsa Natura_, in 1682.[1] By his introduction of the atomic
conception he founded an epoch in chemistry, which, now for the first, was
freed from bondage to the ideas of Aristotle and the alchemists.
Atomism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not a
philosophical theory of the world. A sincerely religious man,[2] he regards
with disfavor both the atheism of Epicurus and his complete rejection of
teleology--the world-machine points to an intelligent Creator and a purpose
in creation; motion, to a divine impulse. He defends, on the other hand,
the right of free inquiry against the priesthood and the pedantry of the
schools, holding that the supernatural must be sharply distinguished from
the natural, and mere conjectures concerning insoluble problems from
positions susceptible of experimental proof; while, in opposition to
submission to authority, he remarks that the current coin of opinion must
be estimated, not by the date when and the person by whom it was minted but
by the value of the metal alone. Cartesian elements in Boyle are the start
from doubt, the derivation of all motion from pressure and impact, and the
extension of the mechanical explanation to the organic world. His inquiries
relate exclusively to the world of matter so far as it was "completed on
the last day but one of creation." He defends empty space against Descartes
and Hobbes. He is the first to apply the mediaeval terms, primary and
secondary qualities, to the antithesis between objective properties which
really belong to things, and sensuous or subjective qualities present only
in the feeling subject.[3]
[Footnote 1: Boyle's _Works_ were published in Latin at Geneva, in 1660, in
six volumes, and in 1714 in five; an edition by Birch appeared at London,
1744, in five volumes, second edition, 1772, in six. Cf.
Buckle, _History
of Civilization in England_, vol. i. chap. vii. pp. 265-268; Lange,
_History of Materialism_, vol. i. pp. 298-306; vol. ii.
p. 351 _seq_.;
Georg Baku, _Der Streit über den Naturbegriff, Zeitschrift für
Philosophie_, vol. xcviii., 1891, p. 162 _seq_.]
[Footnote 2: The foundation named after him had for its object to promote
by means of lectures the investigation of nature on the basis of atomism,
and, at the same time, to free it from the reproach of leading to atheism
and to show its harmony with natural religion. Samuel Clarke's work on _The
Being and Attributes of God_, 1705, originated in lectures delivered on
this foundation.]
[Footnote 3: Eucken, _Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie_,
pp. 94, 196.]
%8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.%
%(a) Bacon's Predecessors.%--The darkness which lay over the beginnings
of modern English philosophy has been but incompletely dispelled by
the meritorious work of Ch. de Rémusat _(Histoire de la Philosophie en
Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu'a Locke_, 2 vols., 1878).
The most recent
investigations of J. Freudenthal _(Beiträge zur Geschichte der Englischen
Philosophie_, in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vols. iv. and
v., 1891) have brought assistance in a way deserving of thanks, since they
lift at important points the veil which concealed Bacon's relations to his
predecessors and contemporaries, by describing the scientific tendencies
and achievements of Digby and Temple. The following may be taken from his
results.
Everard Digby (died 1592; chief work, _Theoria Analytica,_ 1579),
instructor in logic in Cambridge from 1573, who was strongly influenced
by Reuchlin and who favored an Aristotelian-Alexandrian-Cabalistic
eclecticism, was the first to disseminate Neoplatonic ideas in England;
and, in spite of the lack of originality in his systematic presentation of
theoretical philosophy, aroused the study of this branch in England into
new life. His opponent, Sir William Temple [1] (1553-1626), by his defense
and exposition of the doctrine of Ramus (introduced into Great Britain by
George Buchanan and his pupil, Andrew Melville), made Cambridge the chief
center of Ramism. He was the first who openly opposed Aristotle.
[Footnote 1: Temple was secretary to Philip Sidney, William Davison, and
the Earl of Essex, and, from 1619, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin.
His maiden work, _De Unica P. Rami Methodo_, which he published under the
pseudonym, Mildapettus 1580, was aimed at Digby's _De Duplici Methodo_. His
chief work, _P. Rami Dialectics Libri Dua Scholiis, Illustrati_, appeared
in 1584.]
Bacon was undoubtedly acquainted with both these writers and took ideas
from both. Digby represented the scholastic tendency, which Bacon
vehemently opposed, yet without being able completely to break away
from it. Temple was one of those who supplied him with weapons for this
conflict. Finally, it must be mentioned that many of the English scientists
of the time, especially William Gilbert (1540-1603; _De Magnete_, 1600),
physician to Queen Elizabeth, used induction in their work before Bacon
advanced his theory of method.
%(b) Bacon%.--The founder of the empirical philosophy of modern times was
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon began
his political career by sitting in Parliament for many years under Queen
Elizabeth, as whose counsel he was charged with the duty of engaging in
the prosecution of his patron, the Earl of Essex, and at whose command he
prepared a justification of the process. Under James I, he attained the
highest offices and honors, being made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1617,
Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in
1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and
condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the
remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every
suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity.
The moral laxity
of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be
aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive
ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant
nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation of
sentiment; there were many things which he loved more than virtue, and many
which he feared more than guilt. He first gained renown as an author by his
ethical, economic, and political _Essays_, after the manner of Montaigne;
of these the first ten appeared in 1597, in the third edition (1625)
increased to fifty-eight; the Latin translation bears the title _Sermones
Fideles_. His great plan for a "restoration of the sciences" was intended
to be carried out in four, or rather, in six parts. But only the first two
parts of the _Instauratio Magna_ were developed: the _encyclopaedia_, or
division of all sciences[1], a chart of the _globus intellectualis_, on
which was depicted what each science had accomplished and what still
remained for each to do; and the development of the _new method_. Bacon
published his survey of the circle of the sciences in the English work, the
_Advancement of Learning_, 1605, a much enlarged revision of which, _De
Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_, appeared in Latin in 1623. In 1612
he printed as a contribution to methodology the draft, _Cogitata et Visa_
(written 1607), later recast into the [first book of the] _Novum Organum_,
1620. This title, _Novum Organum_, of itself indicates opposition to
Aristotle, whose logical treatises had for ages been collected under the
title _Organon_. If in this work Bacon had given no connected exposition
of his reforming principles, but merely a series of aphorisms, and this
an incomplete one, the remaining parts are still more fragmentary, only
prefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. The
third part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural
_history, Historia Naturalis_, and the last,--introduced by a _Scala
Intellectus_ (ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the method
by examples), and by _Prodromi_ (preliminary results of his own
inquiries),--by natural _science, Philosophia Secunda_.
The best edition of
Bacon's works is the London one of Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1857 _seq_., 7
vols., 2d ed., 1870; with 7 volumes additional of _The Letters and Life of
Francis Bacon, including His Occasional Works_, and a Commentary, by J.
Spedding, 1862-74. Spedding followed this further with a briefer _Account
of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon_, 2 vols., 1878[2].
[Footnote 1: According to the faculties of the soul, memory, imagination,
and understanding, three principal sciences are distinguished; history,
poesy, and philosophy. Of the three objects of the latter, "nature strikes
the mind with a direct ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himself
with a reflected ray." Theology is natural or revealed.
Speculative
(theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned with
material and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, according to
the traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon's own
opinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophy
is mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprises
anthropology (including logic and ethics) and politics.
This division of
Bacon was still retained by D'Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the
_Encyclopédie_.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. on Bacon, K. Fischer, 2d ed., 1875; Chr. Sigwart, in the
_Preussische Jahrbücher_, 1863 and 1864, and in vol. ii.
of his _Logik_;
H. Heussler, _Baco und seine geschichtliche Stellung_, Breslau, 1889.
[Adamson, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th. ed., vol. iii.
pp. 200-222;
Fowler, English Philosophers Series, 1881; Nichol, Blackwood's
Philosophical Classics, 2 vols., 1888-89.--TR.]] Bacon's merit was
threefold: he felt more forcibly and more clearly than previous
thinkers the need of a reform in science; he set up a new and grand
ideal--unbiased and methodical investigation of nature in order to
mastery over nature; and he gave information and directions as to
the way in which this goal was to be attained, which, in spite of their
incompleteness in detail, went deep into the heart of the subject and laid
the foundation for the work of centuries.[1] His faith in the omnipotence
of the new method was so strong, that he thought that science for the
future could almost dispense with talent. He compares his method to a
compass or a ruler, with which the unpractised man is able to draw circles
and straight lines better than an expert without these instruments.
[Footnote 1: His detractors are unjust when they apply the criterion of the
present method of investigation and find only imperfection in an imperfect
beginning.]
All science hitherto, Bacon declares, has been uncertain and unfruitful,
and does not advance a step, while the mechanic arts grow daily more
perfect; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking in
content, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledge
must abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing nature to
answer his questions. The seeker after fruitful knowledge must increase
the number of discoveries, and transform them from matters of chance into
matters of design. For discovery conditions the power, greatness, and
progress of mankind. Man's power is measured by his knowledge, knowledge is
power, and nature is conquered by obedience--_scientia est potentia; natura
parendo vincitur_.
Bacon declares three things indispensable for the attainment of this
power-giving knowledge: the mind must understand the instruments of
knowledge; it must turn to experience, deriving the materials of knowledge
from perception; and it must not rise from particular principles to the
higher axioms too rapidly, but steadily and gradually through middle
axioms. The mind can accomplish nothing when left to itself; but undirected
experience alone is also insufficient (experimentation without a plan is
groping in the dark), and the senses, moreover, are deceptive and not acute
enough for the subtlety of nature--therefore, methodical experimentation
alone, not chance observation, is worthy of confidence.
Instead of the
customary divorce of experience and understanding, a firm alliance, a
"lawful marriage," must be effected between them. The empiricists merely
collect, like the ants; the dogmatic metaphysicians spin the web of their
ideas out of themselves, like the spiders; but the true philosopher must be
like the bee, which by its own power transforms and digests the gathered
material.
As the mind, like a dull and uneven mirror, by its own nature distorts the
rays of objects, it must first of all be cleaned and polished, that is, it
must be freed from all prejudices and false notions, which, deep-rooted by
habit, prevent the formation of a true picture of the world. It must root
out its prejudices, or, where this is impossible, at least understand them.
Doubt is the first step on the way to truth. Of these Phantoms or Idols to
be discarded, Bacon distinguishes four classes: Idols of the Theater, of
the Market Place, of the Den, and of the Tribe. The most dangerous are
the _idola theatri_, which consist in the tendency to put more trust in
authority and tradition than in independent reflection, to adopt current
ideas simply because they find general acceptance.
Bacon's injunction
concerning these is not to be deceived by stage-plays (_i.e._, by the
teachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are);
instead of believing others, observe for thyself! The _idola fori_, which
arise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon the
confusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value and
which are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, with
things themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The _idola
specus_ are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehension
of the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thought
toward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator's
habit of transferring ideas current in his own department to subjects of a
different kind. Such individual weaknesses are numberless, yet they may in
part be corrected by comparison with the perceptions of others. The _idola
tribus_, finally, are grounded in the nature of the human species. To this
class belong, among others, illusions of the senses, which may in part be
corrected by the use of instruments, with which we arm our organs; further,
the tendency to hold fast to opinions acceptable to us in spite of contrary
instances; similarly, the tendency to anthropomorphic views, including,
as its most important special instance, the mistake of thinking that we
perceive purposive relations everywhere and the working of final causes,
after the analogy of human action, when in reality efficient causes alone
are concerned. Here Bacon's injunction runs, not to interpret natural
phenomena teleologically, but to explain them from mechanical causes; not
to narrow the world down to the limits of the mind, but to extend the mind
to the boundaries of the world, so that it shall understand it as it
really is.
To these warnings there are added positive rules. When the investigator,
after the removal of prejudices and habitual modes of thought, approaches
experience with his senses unperverted and a purified mind, he is to
advance from the phenomena given to their conditions.
First of all, the
facts must be established by observation and experiment, and systematically
arranged,[1] then let him go on to causes and laws.[2]
The true or
scientific induction[3] thus inculcated is quite different from the
credulous induction of common life or the unmethodical induction of
Aristotle. Bacon emphasizes the fact that hitherto the importance of
negative instances, which are to be employed as a kind of counter-proof,
has been completely overlooked, and that a substitute for complete
induction, which is never attainable, may be found, on the one hand, in the
collection of as many cases as possible, and, on the other, by considering
the more important or decisive cases, the "prerogative instances." Then the
inductive ascent from experiment to axiom is to be followed by a deductive
descent from axioms to new experiments and discoveries.
Bacon rejects
the syllogism on the ground that it fits one to overcome his opponent in
disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own
application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a
dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful
promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His
strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction
of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions;
and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their
ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in his
theory was his complete failure to recognize the services promised by
mathematics to natural science. The charge of utilitarianism, which has
been so broadly made, is, on the contrary, unjust. For no matter how
strongly he emphasizes the practical value of knowledge, he is still in
agreement with those who esteem the godlike condition of calm and cheerful
acquaintance with truth more highly than the advantages to be expected from
it; he desires science to be used, not as "a courtezan for pleasure," but
"as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort," and--
leaving entirely out
of view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge--he
conceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that the