Sir Francis Bacon
In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon, a senior British statesman and philosopher, produced a book called 'Novum Organum' or New Method. Bacon starts by arguing that intellectual effort at understanding nature, in his time, was indistinguishable from any other intellectual effort such as the studies of justice and ethics. The study of such subjects was mostly about the application of existing knowledge. The physical workings of the natural world were different, he argued. Nature was out there. It was whatever it was. We couldn't decide how we would like it to be, as we could shape our morals and make new laws.
He proposed two streams of philosophical thinking. One should be about improvement and/or diversity of our understanding of existing knowledge. The other should be about the discovery of new knowledge. The reason for making such a distinction was to ensure that the search for new knowledge was not prejudiced by any possible errors in our existing knowledge, understandings and interpretations.
The specifics of the "Baconian Method" are not practised by Science today but the principles on which he based his method are still applied. The New Method starts by listing these principles as a set of pithy statements which form a sort of guide for doing science.
I paraphrase these statements as follows:
- Knowledge must be based on actual observations
- Use tools and instruments to go beyond human limitations
- Seek to understand nature as laws of cause and effects
- Knowing how to manipulate nature is not the same as understanding how it works
- New ideas and methods are essential to the discovery of the as yet unknown
- Broad knowledge is not enough. Seek the principles from which that knowledge can be derived
- Develop new methods for studying nature and be prepared to invent new fields of study
- Don't trust common sense
- Expect nature to be subtle beyond our capacity to sense and understand
- Expect new discovery to require new mathematics
- Established science is not just incomplete, it will contain errors that mislead new research
- Beware syllogisms. They depend on the quality of the propositions
- Beware propositions. They depend on abstract concepts that go beyond the facts
- Beware of imprecise concepts such as: Heavy, Rare, Attraction, Matter
- Beware of precise classifications such as Black, White, Dog that may not be so precise
- Assumptions must always be identified and be concisely stated
- Research should derive from and build upon prior research
- Research method should build from facts to simple hypotheses to broader theory
- Resist the temptation to jump to conclusions. Our imagination lacks nature's subtlety
- Experiments are the key to arriving at correct conclusions by gradual steps
- Beware of dogma. The search for truth requires scepticism
- Successful research method can be re-applied to new problems. Thus the method develops
- Theories must be precise and it should be clear how they could be disproved
- Only rigorous method can result in a reliable interpretation of nature
- An assumption that is supported by many may yet be wrong
- Fanciful yet wrong ideas can be more appealing than the results of rigorous experiment
- Appealing ideas are promoted by those whose goal is to obtain support, not truth
- Progress in science will result from the elimination of false ideas
- Science must start anew from the bottom and not try to build on old untested ideas
- What science requires is not wit and wisdom but method and its strict practice
- Human physical senses and perceptions give us a distorted and restricted view of nature
- Our individual prejudices and history of experiences can mislead us
- Languages and their limitations obfuscate our communication of facts and concepts
- Education, culture and religion all precondition us to favour one idea over another
- Seek to disprove what you know. Seek counter-evidence
- Hypotheses should come from the application of inductive reasoning to recorded observations