CHAPTER VI 



SCIENTIFIC METHOD GILBERT, GALILEO, 

 HARVEY, DESCARTES 



THE previous chapter has given some indication of 

 the range of the material which was demanding scien- 

 tific investigation at the end of the sixteenth and the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century. The same 

 period witnessed a conscious development of the 

 method, or methods, of investigation. As we have 

 seen, Bacon wrote in 1620 a considerable work, The 

 New Logic (Novum Organum), so called to dis- 

 tinguish it from the traditional deductive logic. It 

 aimed to furnish the organ or instrument, to indi- 

 cate the correct mental procedure, to be employed in 

 the discovery of natural law. Some seventeen years 

 later, the illustrious Frenchman Rene Descartes 

 (1596-1650) published his Discourse on the Method 

 of rightly conducting the Reason and seeking Truth 

 in the Sciences. Both of these philosophers illustrated 

 by their own investigations the efficiency of the 

 methods which they advocated. 



Before 1620, however, the experimental method 

 had already yielded brilliant results in the hands of 

 other scientists. We pass over Leonardo da Vinci 

 and many others in Italy and elsewhere, whose names 

 should be mentioned if we were tracing this method 

 to its origin. By 1600 William Gilbert (1540-1603), 

 physician to Queen Elizabeth, before whom, as a 

 picture in his birthplace illustrates, he was called to 



