SECTION 6. THE PROGRESS OF METHODOLOGICAL THEORY. 45 



When we remember that Bacon wrote at the very dawn of 

 modern science, that the few experimenters of his day were 

 scarcely distinguishable in the swarm of alchemists, astrologers, 

 and magicians, and that even the terminology at his disposal 

 was unspeakably confusing, we shall not be surprised at his 

 numerous misapprehensions and the comparative crudity which 

 he displays. The admiration lavished by Herschel on Bacon 

 as the father of inductive logic is richly deserved: "It is to 

 our immortal countryman Bacon that we owe the broad an- 

 nouncement of this grand and fertile principle, and the develop- 

 ment of the idea, that the whole of natural philosophy consists 

 entirely of a series of inductive generalisations, commencing 

 with the most circumstantially stated particulars, and carried 

 up to universal laws, or axioms, which comprehend in their 

 statements every subordinate degree of generality, and of a 

 corresponding series of inverted reasoning from generals to 

 particulars, by which these axioms are traced back into their 

 remote consequences, and all particular propositions deduced 

 from them; as well those by whose immediate consideration 

 we rose to our discovery, as those of which we had no pre- 

 vious knowledge." (Discourse, [96.].) Here we shall leave Bacon. 



15. Reactions, if not inevitable, are common. Thus it is not sur- 

 prising that attempts should have been made to remove the laurel wreath 

 from Francis Bacon's brow and place it on Roger Bacon's. This method 

 of referring back systems of thought to some real or imaginary precursor 

 has its dangers, for the process permits of indefinite extension. Thus we 

 read concerning Roger Bacon: "Baco hatte seine philosophische Anregung 

 hauptsachlich aus den Arabern gescho'pft." (Karl Werner, Die Kosmologie 

 und allgemeine Naturlehre des Roger Baco, Vienna, 1879, p. 5.) Nor was 

 he inclined to be heretical in theology: "Bacon accepted the dominant 

 mediaeval convictions: the entire truth of scripture; the absolute validity 

 of the revealed religion, with its dogmatic formulation ; also (to his detri- 

 ment) the universally prevailing view that the end of all the sciences is 

 to serve their queen, theology." (H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind. 

 vol. 2, 1919, p. 515.) As for his ethics: "C'esf a Aristote surtout que sont 

 empruntees la plupart des idees de Bacon sur la vertu." (Emile Charles, 

 Roger Bacon, 1861, p. 257.) In respect of his Optics, this was "based 

 upon the great work of Alhazen" (J. H. Bridges, Life and Work of Roger 

 Bacon, 1914, p. 24); "Mathematics in Bacon's mind was little more than 

 astronomy" (D. E. Smith, in "On the place of Roger Bacon in the History 

 of Mathematics", in Roger Bacon, ed. by A. G. Little, 1914, p. 174); and 

 his experiments with burning glasses, etc., were repetitions of well-known 

 attempts. (A. G. Little, Part of the Opus Tertium of Roger Bacon, 1912, 

 p. xxxvii.) So also Charles informs us in the course of his erudite in- 

 vestigation that "la plupart des decouvertes de Bacon en optique ne sont 

 pas plus reelles que les precedentes" (op. cit., p. 302), that is, those re- 

 lating to bridges, gunpowder, and the like. And concerning his scientific 

 equipment we learn that Bacon was "trained in scientific method by 

 Grosseteste and other members of the English mathematical school". 

 (Bridges, op. cit., p. 24.) Indeed, nothing more fantastic and untrustworthy 

 can be imagined in our age, than the medieval science of Roger Bacon 

 borrowed from his contemporaries, as exemplified, for instance, in The 

 Mirror of Alchemy, etc., a translation of which treatises appeared in 1597; 

 in The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth, ed. 1683 ; or in the 

 third part of Friedrich Roth-Scholtzen's Deutsches Theatrum Chemicum, 

 part 3, 1732. 



