SECTION 6. THE PROGRESS OF METHODOLOGICAL THEORY. 43 



theoretical side, Bacon defines to be "the knowledge of causes 

 and secret motions of things" (New Atlantis)-, or as he expresses 

 this in another place: "the true and lawful goal of the sciences 

 is none other than this : that human life be endowed with new 

 discoveries and powers". (Novum Organum, bk. 1, 81.) 



There is a popular proverb to the effect that "the proof 

 of the pudding lies in the eating", and one would be justified 

 in maintaining that the proof of a method lies in its results. 

 Now in the above example Bacon reaches the conclusion that 

 "heat is a motion, expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife 

 upon the smaller particles of bodies" (bk. 2, 20), and modern 

 science concurs that heat is a mode of motion, that it is ex- 

 pansive, and is concerned with the molecules of which bodies 

 are composed. 1 All circumstances considered, this is an epoch- 

 making discovery. To arrive at this result Bacon examines 

 exhaustively classes of instances where heat appears as well 

 as the degree of the heat, and where it is absent under cir- 

 cumstances corresponding to those where heat is present. He 

 then excludes all factors not common to every instance of heat, 

 formulates a careful definition embodying the results obtained, 

 and draws certain deductions. 



The virtue of this method is obvious. It involves a compre- 

 hensive and cautious general survey of the facts and a syste- 

 matic elimination of everything that is irrelevant to the matter 

 in hand a proceeding which, if universally imitated, would 

 invalidate partially or wholly most of the conclusions reached 

 in the more strictly human sciences, and would materially en- 

 rich the established physical and biological sciences where, as 

 a rule, only prominent thinkers follow this direction. It is the 

 very opposite of the all too common practice of cursory obser- 

 vation, chance generalisation, and casual verification. Up to 

 the present this central method of Bacon's is the only one 

 which has striven to arrive at truth through a series of syn- 

 thetically connected links instead of through some jumpy, vague, 

 or disconnected mode of procedure, and may therefore be said 

 still to be without a peer or even rival. Granted that it is 

 only applicable to less obscure problems of a general character, 

 that it requires subsidiary aids as Bacon concedes,- and that 

 its rigour may be somewhat relaxed under relatively favourable 

 circumstances where many relevant facts are scientifically estab- 

 lished, there is still enormous scope for its use. The method 

 seems to be in place in the cultural sciences generally, and in 

 all others so far as the facts are open to inspection. Reluctance 

 lo be bound by exacting rules, convenience in following others 



1 Compare John Tyndall, Heat as a Mode of Motion, 1887, and J. Clerk 

 Maxwell, Theory of Heat, 1894. 



2 In his "histories" there is no clear indication of the employment of 

 subsidiary aids, and yet the presence of such aids is the ultimate criterion 

 of a complete methodology. 



