THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 81 



scientist; he took no part in experimental work, and he was 

 largely ignorant of the great work of the scientists of his 

 time. Leonardo da \^inci in mechanics, Kepler in astronomy, 

 Gilbert in electricity, and Vesalius in anatomy had made 

 great contributions to scientific knowledge, but Bacon ig- 

 nored all of them in his writing. He was a philosopher but, 

 above all, he was a writer and advocate. He had a wonderful 

 gift in his trenchant pen and in his facility of expression, 

 and he carried the popular imagination with him in his em- 

 phasis on observation and experiment as against the accept- 

 ance of tradition. Bacon believed that all fruitful knowledge 

 was to be based upon inference from particular occasions in 

 the past to particular occasions in the future, and this he 

 called the method of inductive reasoning. In addition, he 

 had two ideas of the utmost importance, ideas that were in- 

 strumental in producing the scientific revolution. They w^ere 

 that knowledge is to be acquired primarily by observation 

 and experiment and that the application of scientific knowl- 

 edge could lead to practical results of the utmost value. 

 Bacon overestimated the ease with which scientific knowl- 

 edge can be obtained, and he fell into an error in ^vhich he 

 is followed by many today— the error of believing that scien- 

 tific research can be organized like an engineering project 

 and that the way to make scientific discoveries is to plan to 

 make them. 



Bacon's first aim was to organize a system for the investi- 

 gation of nature by observation and experiment. A great 

 number of observed facts would be collected, and from them 

 the fundamental processes of nature could be understood. 

 In this way, he believed, it was possible to attain to "the 

 knowledge of Causes and secret motions of things, and the 

 enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting 

 of all things possible." This w^as a great vision, a new vision 

 on the earth, and a vision that has been realized. The method 

 that Bacon suggested for carrying out this idea was the organi- 

 zation of a research institute,* which he entitled the "House 



* Chapter VIII, p. 180. 



