SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



stirring into life the dry bones of a rigid and antiquated 

 philosophy. Scholasticism, already in decay, was slowly 

 losing its hold upon the more active minds, who refused 

 to accept any longer as final the traditional hypotheses 

 and syllogistic methods of the schools in the interpreta- 

 tion of natural phenomena. There was growing slowly a 

 conviction of the necessity, in the study of Nature, of an 

 appeal to Nature herself by means of direct experiment. 



Of the great men who had come into this state of mental 

 unrest, the most original and creative was Francis Bacon, 

 who, by the unequalled power and eloquence with which 

 he summed up and put into a connected system the new 

 ideas which were in the air, gave so great an impulse to the 

 newer mode of thinking, as rightly to have received the 

 name of the " Father of experimental philosophy." His 

 immediate success was due, however, in no small part, 

 to the circumstance that the time was ripe for the great 

 changes in the way of studying Nature, which in his 

 writings he so powerfully expounded and enforced. 



I must pause for a moment to say how very unfortunate 

 in this respect was the lot of his great, if not greater, 

 namesake, Roger Bacon, the " Doctor Mirabilis," as he 

 was properly named, who, born out of due time, exerted 

 but little influence on contemporary thought. 



Let us not forget that it was Roger Bacon who, 300 

 years before the time of " large-browed Verulam," saw 

 clearly that the study of Nature could only be successfully 

 prosecuted and advanced by means of experimental 



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