34 Introduction 



After three and a half centuries of additional gestation and many more 

 experiments in various fields, Bacon's formulation and vindication of the 

 experimental method was renewed with greater light and strength by his 

 countryman and namesake Francis Bacon. In the Advancement of 

 Learning ( 1605 ) and even more so in the Novum organum ( 1620 ) the 

 second Bacon brought a new charter to the men of science, an invita- 

 tion to apply the new method of truthseeking to all the problems of sci- 

 ence and life. Bacon was much less a prophet than an eloquent advo- 

 cate of the spirit of his time. The experimental method had finally 

 reached maturity. Galileo's writings were even more influential than 

 Bacon's for the latter 's were purely rhetorical while Galileo's 

 were accompanied by great deeds, revolutionary discoveries. Bacon 

 preached but Galileo wrought. 



Bacon's and Galileo's ideas were so timely and so readily under- 

 stood by many eager minds that new societies were created for the very 

 purpose of implementing them. The earliest of those societies were 

 established under Galileo's influence in Italy, the Accademia dei Lincei 

 (1603-30) in Rome and after his death the Accademia del Cimento 

 ( 1657-67 ) in Florence. Note their titles, the Academy of the lynxes and 

 the Academy of experiment. The first title continued the allegorical 

 habits of earlier academies, but the references to lynxes, animals who see 

 in the dark, was significant; the symbolic meaning was accentuated in 

 the Academy's device, a lynx tearing Cerberus with its claws, the struggle 

 of truth with superstition. The second title was even more significant. 

 The Academy of experiment!; its members gathered for the purpose 

 of experimenting and of discovering the truth by the experimental 

 method.^'^ 



Both academies were shortlived, for the Italian climate of that time 

 was not favorable to the development of untrammelled truthseeking, but 

 their efforts were continued in exemplary fashion by two other academies 

 established in England and France before the closing of the Accademia 

 del Cimento. The reader knows that I am referring to the Royal 

 Society founded in London in 1662, and the Academic des Sciences 

 founded in Paris in 1666. These two academies are still functioning 

 to-day but never were their activities more necessary and more pregnant 

 than in their early years. The academies of the seventeenth century 

 marked the triumph of the experimental method and the birth of mod- 



which is one of the most remarkable examples of experimental science in the Middle 

 Ages, was written by Peter the Stranger (XIII-2) at almost the same time, 1269. 

 It does not speak of the method, except a few lines in chapter 2. 



^ The Accademia del cimento fully justified its title and accomplished its pur- 

 pose. Its deeds were published by its second and last secretary, Lorenzo Maga- 

 lotti (1637-1712), in a beautiful folio volume Saggi di naturali esperienze (Firenze 

 1667). This was Englished by Richard Waller (c. 1650-1715) and pubHshed by 

 order of the Royal Society, Essayes of natural experiments made in the Academie del 

 Cimento (London 1684). Sixty-four years after the original publication it was 

 translated into Latin by the Dutch physicist, Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692- 

 1761), Tentamina experimentorum naturalium captorum in Academia del Cimento 

 (474 p., 32 pi., Leiden 1731), with additions and a discourse on experimental 

 method by the translator. 



