CH. xiii. FRANCIS BA CON. — ' NO VUM ORGANUM. ' ic 



CHAPTER XIII. 



SCIENCE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (CONTINUED). 



Francis Bacon, 156 1-1626 — He teaches the true method of studying 

 Science in his 'Novum Organum' — Rene Descartes, 1596-1650 — 

 He teaches that Doubt is more honest than Ignorant Assertion — 

 Willebrord Snellius discovers the Law of Refraction, 1621 — 

 Explanation of this Law. 



Bacon's Influence upon Science. — Although this book 

 is a history of scientific discovery and not of philosophy, 

 yet we must now mention in passing two philosophers who 

 lived about this time, and whose writings had great in- 

 fluence upon science. These were Francis Bacon in Eng- 

 land, and Rene Descartes in France. 



Francis Bacon, commonly known as Lord Bacon, was 

 born in London in 1561, and died in 1626. He was made 

 Lord Chancellor of England in 16 18, in the reign of 

 James I., with the title of Lord Verulam and afterwards 

 Viscount St. Alban's, and was a great political character. 

 Bacon devoted much of his time to science, and, like his 

 namesake Roger Bacon in the fifteenth century, he seems to 

 have foreseen many of the discoveries which were afterwards 

 made. But his most useful work was a book called the 

 'Novum Organum,' or 'New Method,' pubhshed in 1620, 

 in which he sketched out very fully how science ought to be 

 studied. He insisted that no knowledge can be real but 

 that which is founded on experience, and that the only 



