Thursday, 29 April 2010

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, born in 1561, added a key element to the genesis of the mechanical universe. In essence, he attacked the traditional knowledge at that time. In fact, he enjoyed telling people they were wrong. He believed that knowledge shouldn't be derived from books, but from experience itself.
Also, Bacon proposed the Aristotelean model of induction and empiricism as the best model for human knowledge. For example, in inductive thinking, a person would observe something and then derive general principles or ideas to explain those observations. You can see this was happening very often during this time in the scientific revolution, such as the geocentric/heliocentric conflict. This empirical induction believed by Bacon was the true piece that completed the puzzle in European world view and made the scientific revolution possible.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that empirical induction is a big part of the scientific revolution. This is something that we use and trust all the time in our world. But, before the scientific revolution, many Europeans would only trust things that people have believed in their culture for a long time: not necessarily what people have discovered from experience. Bacon argued that human experience can be reliable, as well.

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