From “The Great Instauration”
Bacon broke ground with the emergence of the Enlightenment. The tenets are:
1. Severe criticism of the previous philosophic tradition.
2. The consequent need for a new philosophic foundation.
3. The new foundation seeks to command nature through production and science. Bacon was a father of scientific technology and his philosophy aimed at relief from want and suffering. His idea of the “New Atlantis” represented a foundation that could not be overcome.
4. Bacon also promoted a new way of knowing, a turn in epistemology. He philosophy was severely critical of natural knowing.
The Novum Organum
1. The end of philosophy will be different; it will command nature.
2. The order of demonstrations reject demonstration by syllogism. Instead, induction will be based on actual observation of nature.
The scholastic flew from observation to general propositions. But the new, scientific philosopher needs to stay close to observation that leads to facts.
3. A new form of induction:
a. Analyze experience by analyzing a whole that is greater than its parts. It takes things down to their constituent pieces.
b. We cannot base common knowledge on trust. We must establish all knowledge scientifically.
c. Information of the senses deceives. True sense is undermined.
d. We need experiments to establish knowledge.
i. Bacon was called a priest of the senses.
ii. We must be aware of the cost of vanity and idols.
iii. Sound science is without fables. Medicines, technology, and epistemology itself must be established through the criticisms of the senses.