82 THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 



A further small dash of Baconian empiricism is required to give 

 Galileo's procedure a fully modern flavor. Thus Galileo himself is 

 still too much the Platonist to accept Kepler's elliptic orbits in place 

 of the "perfect" circular orbits that did not meet the obser\'ations 

 quite as well. He is still too little inclined to pay attention to minute 

 details of experience in a world clearly falling short of classic per- 

 fection; this is evident even in his account of the results of the cele- 

 brated experiments on the inclined plane. These results he reports as 

 agreeing with each other, and with theoretical predictions, to a de- 

 gree wholly unattainable with his crude equipment. Intending no 

 dishonesty, Galileo clearly reports not the actual results, but rather 

 what he confidently expected ivoidd have been the results if only 

 things had been more perfectly arranged— ideal results to which he 

 judged the actual results a sufficient approximation. 



Galileo is not alone in such reporting, of course. Perier does much 

 the same in reporting the results of the Puy de Dome experiment, 

 and Pascal reports many "experiments " patently not experiments 

 done but demonstrations confidently conceived. In such instances 

 we never know what are actual experimental results, what are ideal- 

 ized results of actual experiments, and what are only hypothetical 

 results of hypothetical experiments. From this intolerable situation 

 science escapes only through the emphasis made by such as Boyle 

 on the absolute need to distinguish clearly between what is observed 

 and what should be, might be, or could be observed. Such emphasis 

 we find in Bovle's somewhat acerb commentarv on Pascal's "results," 

 as well as in Boyle's own incredibly tedious reports of his own re- 

 sults—down to the last trivial but possibly remotely relevant detail. 

 Faithful Baconian that he was, Boyle is far too empirically minded. 

 But in Newton's Opticks we find at last a very nearly optimal balance 

 of theory and experiment, brilliantly struck by an Englishman who, 

 influenced but not obsessed by the Baconian tradition, adopts the 

 Galilean approach. We arrive here at that experimental science de- 

 scribed by Weizsacker: 



Only the triad of thinking, acting, and perceiving makes the experi- 

 ment possible. . . . 



It is not even sufficient that, in addition to perception, one of the 

 two active dispositions is added to perception: only thinking or only 

 acting. In the first case, the result is philosophy; the second, handi- 

 craft. . . . Galileo ... is probably the first to embody that unity 



