7.1 Some Historical Perspective

It’s helpful to take a quick look at how our current process for scientific reasoning has evolved. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an Englishman with many intellectual passions: law; politics; literature; history; and philosophy, including topics related to acquiring knowledge of the natural world. Among his other viewpoints that were revolutionary for his times, Bacon took exception to the prevailing Aristotelean preference for deduction over induction as the certain path to knowledge of the natural world. He believed that acquiring such knowledge must proceed inductively, by first making recurring and exhaustive observations, collecting as many facts as possible, and then drawing conclusions that generalize the findings from these specific observations. (Perhaps this sounds like the process we called “enumerative induction” in the introductory comments on causal reasoning in section 5.2!)

Bacon’s method — proceeding from copious observation to the formulation of a general theory — became a predominant method in his own era for doing what we now call science, and it had influence for centuries that followed. (Note that the term scientist did not come into use until 1833 when it was adopted as a replacement for natural philosopher.)

Assigned Reading: Learn more about Bacon’s method of induction by reading Section 2.k on Induction  from “Francis Bacon,” by David Simpson, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, https://iep.utm.edu/.

These are among the objections to Bacon’s method for doing science:

• Induction does not bring the level of certainty we seek in science.
• There is no clarity as to when enough observation and investigation have occurred to finally arrive at a generalized conclusion.
• The slow and plodding pace at which the method proceeds does not account for the spontaneous, visionary process and imagination that often leads to new scientific knowledge.