THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 77 



and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms 

 last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried. 



Is this second "way" so diflFerent from that recommended by Aris- 

 totle? 



The natural path of investigation starts from what is more readily 

 knowable and more evident to us [presumably the observable par- 

 ticulars], and proceeds to what is more self-evident and intrinsically 

 more intelligible [the first principles, or Bacon's "most general 

 axioms"]. 



Bacon's criticism seems aimed less at Aristotle's maxim than at its 

 interpretation by Aristotle's followers. Taking their departure from 

 a very small body of roughly observed "particulars," many in the 

 Aristotelian tradition expected to arrive promptly ("flying") at first 

 principles. The premature hardening of these can then develop into 

 the first "way" criticized by Bacon: if some particulars incidentally 

 obsers^ed seem out of keeping with the general principles, these par- 

 ticulars are simply dismissed— perhaps as illusions, trivia, errors, or 

 imperfections of an intrinsically corrupt world. 



The appeal to experience. The warm regard for observational par- 

 ticulars that Bacon preaches is far from a complete novelty of modern 

 science. That regard informs the ancient and vital tradition of Hip- 

 pocratic medicine. Long before the modern period the multiplication 

 of epicycles in the Ptolemaic system testifies to continued efforts to 

 take account of observational particulars. But with the beginning of 

 the modern era the attitude Bacon commends assumes a new weight 

 —perhaps, as Collingwood suggests, through the development of a 

 new cosmologic conception of nature. 



In the early phase [of Renaissance cosmology], the world of nature, 

 which is now called natura natiirata, is still conceived as a living or- 

 ganism, whose immanent energies and forces are vital and psychical 

 in character. ... as time went on . . . the idea of nature as an 

 organism was replaced by the idea of nature as a machine. . . . But 

 even the earlier view differed sharply from the Greek theory of the 

 world as an organism, owing to its insistence on the conception of 

 immanence. Formal and efficient causes were regarded as being in 

 the world of nature instead of being (as they were for Aristotle) 

 outside nature. This immanence lent a new dignity to the natural 

 world itself. ... it led people ... to look at natural phenomena 



