SECTION 20. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 167 



arrived at finality. Granted, initially, a virtual chaos and scanty 

 positive knowledge whereby to appraise results, and we can 

 readily comprehend both the gradual and disjointed evolution 

 of methods as well as the step-by-step improvement of parti- 

 cular modes of procedure. 



If, therefore, a modern observer appears to us greatly 

 superior, as an observer, to a Lucretius or a Pliny, we ought 

 to seek the explanation in the connected development of posi- 

 tive knowledge and of sounder methods, and not in inborn 

 capacity. Similarly, if the scholars of the Middle Ages implicitly 

 assumed that in the ancients all requisite information was to 

 be found, we shall appreciate their attitude if we place our- 

 selves in their position and recognise how immeasurably great 

 the Latin and Greek classics must have appeared to a people 

 which had practically no contemporary culture. Reliance on 

 authority was therefore defensible in those days. For the same 

 reason, encountering in Aristotle's works the syllogistic method, 

 it was natural for the scholastics to postulate that scientific 

 method and Aristotelian method were one. So, also, with 

 theology filling almost the whole sky of their non-material 

 interests, it was only to be expected that the Middle Ages 

 should have almost exclusively concentrated on the production 

 of theological treatises. Historic reasons, consequently, may 

 be said to proffer almost the complete explanation of the 

 differences obtaining between the mentality of the scholastics 

 and those of our men of science. 



Again, consider Roger Bacon's conception of the right method 

 of investigation. As we might expect, the appeal to experience 

 and experiment was growing in his day, and he was only one 

 of the foremost champions of that method. However, represent- 

 ing a rather primitive methodological stage historically, we must 

 not be surprised to discover that his conception of experience 

 and experiment was exceedingly crude and confused, almost a 

 caricature of modern views on the subject. Only protracted 

 collective experience lays bare the comparative defectiveness 

 of any methods in use, and Roger Bacon, as an individual, 

 cannot be therefore charged with gross scientific incompetence. 



His namesake, Francis Bacon, occupied a precisely analogous 

 position at a later historic stage. Experience and experiment 

 had enormously advanced Galileo and Gilbert are apt illus- 

 trations of this. About the same period the growth of mathe- 

 matics and the further accumulation of sifted facts brought 

 also the deductive method into vogue, as Descartes' Regulae 

 strikingly exemplify. In view of this methodological develop- 

 ment along multiple lines, Francis Bacon's enthusiasm, as well 

 as his methodological triumphs and failures, are readily under- 

 stood. He, also, represents primarily a historic stage and 

 epoch, and therefore manifestly could not have been a perfect 

 methodologist. 



