The Advancement of Learning Page #33

The Advancement of Learning, published by Francis Bacon in 1605, is a foundational text in the history of science and philosophy. In this work, Bacon advocates for empirical research and the systematic organization of knowledge, laying the groundwork for the scientific method. The book critiques existing scholarly practices and proposes a new approach to learning based on observation and experimentation. It marks a significant shift towards modern scientific inquiry.

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impossibility you add what thing is extant which cometh the nearest in
degree to that impossibility; to the end that by these optatives and
potentials man’s inquiry may be the more awake in deducing direction of
works from the speculation of causes.  And secondly, that these
experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use,
but those principally which are of most universal consequence for
invention of other experiments, and those which give most light to the
invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner’s needle, which
giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the
invention of the sails which give the motion.

(4) Thus have I passed through natural philosophy and the deficiences
thereof; wherein if I have differed from the ancient and received
doctrines, and thereby shall move contradiction, for my part, as I affect
not to dissent, so I purpose not to contend.  If it be truth,

    “Non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvæ,”

the voice of Nature will consent, whether the voice of man do or no.  And
as Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for
Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to mark up their
lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of
truth which cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds which are
capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity
and contention.

(5) But there remaineth a division of natural philosophy according to the
report of the inquiry, and nothing concerning the matter or subject: and
that is positive and considerative, when the inquiry reporteth either an
assertion or a doubt.  These doubts or non liquets are of two sorts,
particular and total.  For the first, we see a good example thereof in
Aristotle’s Problems which deserved to have had a better continuance; but
so nevertheless as there is one point whereof warning is to be given and
taken.  The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that
it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not
fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw
error, but reserved in doubt; the other, that the entry of doubts are as
so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that
which if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but
passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts
is made to be attended and applied.  But both these commodities do
scarcely countervail and inconvenience, which will intrude itself if it
be not debarred; which is, that when a doubt is once received, men labour
rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it, and
accordingly bend their wits.  Of this we see the familiar example in
lawyers and scholars, both which, if they have once admitted a doubt, it
goeth ever after authorised for a doubt.  But that use of wit and
knowledge is to be allowed, which laboureth to make doubtful things
certain, and not those which labour to make certain things doubtful.
Therefore these calendars of doubts I commend as excellent things; so
that there he this caution used, that when they be thoroughly sifted and
brought to resolution, they be from thenceforth omitted, discarded, and
not continued to cherish and encourage men in doubting.  To which
calendar of doubts or problems I advise be annexed another calendar, as
much or more material which is a calendar of popular errors: I mean
chiefly in natural history, such as pass in speech and conceit, and are
nevertheless apparently detected and convicted of untruth, that man’s
knowledge be not weakened nor embased by such dross and vanity.  As for
the doubts or non liquets general or in total, I understand those
differences of opinions touching the principles of nature, and the
fundamental points of the same, which have caused the diversity of sects,
schools, and philosophies, as that of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Democritus,
Parmenides, and the rest.  For although Aristotle, as though he had been
of the race of the Ottomans, thought he could not reign except the first
thing he did he killed all his brethren; yet to those that seek truth and
not magistrality, it cannot but seem a matter of great profit, to see
before them the several opinions touching the foundations of nature.  Not
for any exact truth that can be expected in those theories; for as the
same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by this received astronomy of
the diurnal motion, and the proper motions of the planets, with their
eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of Copernicus, who
supposed the earth to move, and the calculations are indifferently
agreeable to both, so the ordinary face and view of experience is many
times satisfied by several theories and philosophies; whereas to find the
real truth requireth another manner of severity and attention.  For as
Aristotle saith, that children at the first will call every woman mother,
but afterward they come to distinguish according to truth, so experience,
if it be in childhood, will call every philosophy mother, but when it
cometh to ripeness it will discern the true mother.  So as in the
meantime it is good to see the several glosses and opinions upon Nature,
whereof it may be everyone in some one point hath seen clearer than his
fellows, therefore I wish some collection to be made painfully and
understandingly de antiquis philosophiis, out of all the possible light
which remaineth to us of them: which kind of work I find deficient.  But
here I must give warning, that it be done distinctly and severedly; the
philosophies of everyone throughout by themselves, and not by titles
packed and faggoted up together, as hath been done by Plutarch.  For it
is the harmony of a philosophy in itself, which giveth it light and
credence; whereas if it be singled and broken, it will seem more foreign
and dissonant.  For as when I read in Tacitus the actions of Nero or
Claudius, with circumstances of times, inducements, and occasions, I find
them not so strange; but when I read them in Suetonius Tranquillus,
gathered into titles and bundles and not in order of time, they seem more
monstrous and incredible: so is it of any philosophy reported entire, and
dismembered by articles.  Neither do I exclude opinions of latter times
to be likewise represented in this calendar of sects of philosophy, as
that of Theophrastus Paracelsus, eloquently reduced into an harmony by
the pen of Severinus the Dane; and that of Tilesius, and his scholar
Donius, being as a pastoral philosophy, full of sense, but of no great
depth; and that of Fracastorius, who, though he pretended not to make any
new philosophy, yet did use the absoluteness of his own sense upon the
old; and that of Gilbertus our countryman, who revived, with some

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