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The New Organon: or True Directions Concerning …

The New organon : or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of NatureFrancis BaconCopyright Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved[Brackets]enclose editorial explanations. Small dots enclose material that has been added, but can be read asthough it were part of the original text. Occasional bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis .. indicates theomission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reportedbetween brackets in normal-sized type. organon is the conventional title for the collection of logical works byAristotle, a body of doctrine that Bacon aimed to replace.

the new organon francis bacon contents preface 1 aphorisms concerning the interpretation of nature: book 1: 1–774 aphorisms concerning the interpretation of nature: book 1: 78–13024

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Transcription of The New Organon: or True Directions Concerning …

1 The New organon : or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of NatureFrancis BaconCopyright Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved[Brackets]enclose editorial explanations. Small dots enclose material that has been added, but can be read asthough it were part of the original text. Occasional bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis .. indicates theomission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reportedbetween brackets in normal-sized type. organon is the conventional title for the collection of logical works byAristotle, a body of doctrine that Bacon aimed to replace.

2 His titleNovum Organumcould mean The New organon or more modestly A New organon ; the tone of the writing in this work points to the definite launched: January 2005 The New OrganonFrancis BaconContentsPREFACE1 APHORISMS Concerning THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE: BOOK 1: 1 774 APHORISMS Concerning THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE: BOOK 1: 78 13024 APHORISMS Concerning THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE: BOOK 2: 1 2548 APHORISMS Concerning THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE: BOOK 2: 26 4375 APHORISMS Concerning THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE: BOOK 2: 44 52102 The New OrganonFrancis BaconPREFACEPREFACET hose who have taken it on themselves to lay down thelaw of nature as something that has already been discoveredand understood, whether they have spoken in simple confi-dence or in a spirit of professional posturing, have done greatharm to philosophy and the sciences.

3 As well as succeedingin producing beliefs in people, they have been effectivein squashing and stopping inquiry; and the harm theyhave done by spoiling and putting an end to other men sefforts outweighs any good their own efforts have people on the other hand have gone the opposite way,asserting that absolutely nothing can be known havingreached this opinion through dislike of the ancient sophists,or through uncertainty and fluctuation of mind, or eventhrough being crammed with some doctrine or other. Theyhave certainly advanced respectable reasons for their view;but zeal and posturing have carried them much too far: theyhaven t started from true premises or ended at the rightconclusion.

4 The earlier of the ancient Greeks (whose writingsare lost) showed better judgment in taking a position between one extreme: presuming to pronounce on everything,and the opposite extreme: despairing of coming to under-stand they complained bitterly about how hard investigationis and how dark everything is, and were like impatient horseschamping at the bit; but they did pursue their objective andcame to grips with nature, apparently thinking that the wayto settle this question of whether anything can be knownwas not by arguing but by trying testing, experimenting .Yet they too, trusting entirely to the power of their intellect,didn t bring any rules to bear and staked everything on hardthinking and continuous mental method is hard to practice but easy to explain.

5 Ipropose to establishdegreesof certainty, to retain theevidence of the senses subject to certain constraints, butmostly to reject ways of thinking that track along aftersensation. In place of that, I open up a new and certain pathfor the mind to follow, starting from sense-perception. Theneed for this was felt, no doubt, by those who gave suchimportance to dialectics; their emphasis on dialectics showedthat they were looking for aids to the intellect, and had noconfidence in the innate and spontaneous process of themind.[Bacon sdialectica, sometimes translated as logic , refers morenarrowly to the formalized and rule-governed use of logic, especially indebates.]But this remedy did no good, coming as it didafterthe processes of everyday life had filled the mind withhearsay and debased doctrines and infested it with utterlyempty idols.

6 ( I shall explain idols in39 45below .) Theupshot was that the art of dialectics, coming (I repeat) toolate to the rescue and having no power to set matters right,was only good for fixing errors rather than for revealing truth.[Throughout this work, art will refer to any human activity that involvestechniques and requires skills.]We are left with only one way tohealth namely to start the work of the mind all over this, the mind shouldn t be left to its own devices, butright from the outset should be guided at every step, asthough a machine were in if in mechanical projects men had set to workwith their naked hands, without the help and power of tools,just as in intellectual matters they have set to work with littlebut the naked forces of the intellect, even with their bestcollaborating efforts they wouldn t have achieved or even1 The New OrganonFrancis BaconPREFACE attempted much.

7 Suppose that some enormous stonecolumn had to be moved from its place (wanted elsewhere forsome ceremonial purpose), and that men started trying tomove it with their naked hands, wouldn t any sober spectatorthink them mad? If they then brought in more people,thinking that that might do it, wouldn t he think them evenmadder? If they then weeded out the weaker labourers, andused only the strong and vigorous ones, wouldn t he thinkthem madder than ever? Finally, if they resolved to gethelp from the art of athletics, and required all their workersto come with hands, arms, and sinews properly oiled andmedicated according to good athletic practice, wouldn t theonlooker think My God, they are trying to showmethodintheir madness!

8 ?Yet that is exactly how men proceed in intellectualmatters with just the same kind of mad effort and uselesscombining of forces when they hope to achieve great thingseither through their individual brilliance or through the sheernumber of them who will co-operate in the work, and whenthey try through dialectics (which we can see as a kind ofathletic art) to strengthen the sinews of the intellect. With allthis study and effort, as anyone with sound judgment cansee, they are merely applying the naked intellect; whereas inany great work to be done by the hand of man the only wayto increase the force exerted by each and to co-ordinate theefforts of all is through instruments and from those prefatory remarks, there are two morethings I have to say; I want them to be known, and notforgotten.

9 One concerns ancientphilosophers, the otherconcerns modernphilosophy .(1) If I were to declare that I could set out on thesame road as the ancient philosophers and come backwith something better than they did, there would be nodisguising the fact that I was setting up a rivalry betweenthem and me, inviting a comparison in respect of our levelsof excellence or intelligence or competence. There wouldnothing new in that, and nothingwrongwith it either, forif the ancients got something wrong, why couldn t I whycouldn tanyone point it out and criticise them for it? Butthat contest, however right or permissible it was, might havebeen an unequal one, casting an unfavourable light on mypowers.

10 So it is a good thing good for avoiding conflicts andintellectual turmoil that I can leave untouched the honourand reverence due to the ancients, and do what I plan todo while gathering the fruits of my modesty! There won t beany conflict here: my aim is to open up a new road for theintellect to follow, a road the ancients didn t know and didn ttry. I shan t be taking a side or pressing a case. My roleis merely that of a guide who points out the road a lowlyenough task, depending more on a kind of luck than on anyability or excellence.(2) That was a point about persons; the other thing I wantto remind you of concerns the topic itself. Please bear thisin mind: I m not even slightly working to overthrow the phi-losophy[here = philosophy and science ]that is flourishing thesedays, or any other more correct and complete philosophythat has been or will be propounded.


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