Novum Organum

Francis Bacon·1620

Bacon's new instrument for the sciences, in two books of aphorisms. The first clears the ground: the idols that beset the mind, the faults of the received philosophy, and the grounds for hope in a new method. The second sets out that method, a true induction rising by degrees from tables of instances to the forms of things, worked through on the nature of heat, with the twenty-seven kinds of prerogative instances.

Contents

1. Preface pp. 5–10

   Bacon steers between the dogmatists, who treat nature as already known, and the sceptics, who hold that nothing can be known. He offers neither a rival system nor a contest with the ancients but a new road for the mind, setting apart the anticipation of the mind, which serves for disputation, from the interpretation of nature, which serves for discovery.

2. Book I, Aphorisms I–XXXVII pp. 11–19

   Man as nature's minister and interpreter: knowledge and power are one, but the sciences and the syllogism are useless for discovery, and notions hastily abstracted from things are confused. There are two ways of searching for truth, one flying from particulars to the most general axioms, the other rising by degrees, and Bacon contrasts the anticipations of the mind with the interpretation of nature.

3. Book I, Aphorisms XXXVIII–LXVIII pp. 19–43

   The four idols that beset the human mind: the idols of the tribe, rooted in human nature itself; of the den, in each man's character and education; of the market, in the words men use; and of the theatre, in the received systems of philosophy, which Bacon divides into the sophistical, the empirical and the superstitious.

4. Book I, Aphorisms LXIX–XCI pp. 43–73

   The faulty demonstrations that support the idols, the signs by which the received philosophy may be judged (its Greek origins, its barrenness of works, its endless dissensions), and the causes of its errors: the few ages favourable to learning, the neglect of natural philosophy, the reverence for antiquity and authority, and the want of reward for new inquiry.

5. Book I, Aphorisms XCII–CXV pp. 73–90

   Against the despair that most hinders the sciences, Bacon sets out the grounds for hope: the errors of the past themselves, a new and better ordered experience, written records of experiment, a ladder of axioms rising by degrees, and a true induction; if chance has given us gunpowder, silk and the compass, method should give far more.

6. Book I, Aphorisms CXVI–CXXX pp. 90–107

   Bacon answers the objections his method may meet, disclaiming any new sect, any haste for works over light, and any wish to abolish the arts, and closes with the dignity of inventions and of the empire of man over nature, to be recovered through the arts and sciences.

7. Book II, Aphorisms I–X pp. 108–121

   The aim of human knowledge is the discovery of forms, the laws that make a nature what it is, as the aim of power is to superinduce new natures on bodies. Bacon distinguishes the latent process and latent conformation of bodies, divides philosophy into physics and metaphysics, and lays out the plan of the interpretation of nature.

8. Book II, Aphorisms XI–XX pp. 121–159

   The method at work on the nature of heat: tables of presence, of absence in proximate instances, and of degrees, then the exclusion of natures that are not its form, ending in a first vintage, or provisional interpretation, that heat is an expansive and restrained motion striving through the smaller parts of bodies.

9. Book II, Aphorisms XXI–XXXVII pp. 159–212

   The helps to induction that follow the first vintage, beginning with the prerogative instances. These first fifteen kinds aid the understanding: solitary, migrating, conspicuous, clandestine, constitutive, similar, singular, deviating and bordering instances, instances of power, accompanying and hostile, subjunctive and allied instances, and the instances of the cross and of divorce.

10. Book II, Aphorisms XXXVIII–XLIII pp. 212–230

    The five instances of the lamp, which aid the senses: instances of the door, such as the microscope and telescope, citing instances, which bring to the senses what cannot be perceived directly, instances of the road, which follow nature's gradual motions, and supplementary and lancing instances.

11. Book II, Aphorisms XLIV–LII pp. 230–290

    The prerogative instances that aid practice: instances of the rod, of the course and of quantity, and wrestling instances, with Bacon's list of the simple motions of matter, then suggesting, generally useful and magical instances. The book closes with the uses of the twenty-seven kinds and the plan of the work still to come.