1620. In this year, Francis Bacon[110] published his _Novum Organum_,[111]
which was long held in England--but not until the last century--to be the
work which taught Newton and all his successors how to philosophize. That
Newton never mentions Bacon, nor alludes in any way to his works, passed
for nothing. Here and there a paradoxer ventured not to find all this
teaching in Bacon, but he was pronounced blind. In our day it begins to be
seen that, great as Bacon was, and great as his book really is, he is not
the philosophical father of modern discovery.
But old prepossession will find reason for anything. A learned friend of
mine wrote to me that he had discovered proof that Newton owned Bacon for
his master: the proof was that Newton, in some of his earlier writings,
used the {76} phrase _experimentum crucis_, which is Bacon's. Newton may
have read some of Bacon, though no proof of it appears. I have a dim idea
that I once saw the two words attributed to the alchemists: if so, there is
another explanation; for Newton was deeply read in the alchemists.
I subjoin a review which I wrote of the splendid edition of Bacon by
Spedding,[112] Ellis,[113] and Heath.[114] All the opinions therein
expressed had been formed by me long before: most of the materials were
collected for another purpose.
The Works of Francis Bacon. Edited by James Spedding, R. Leslie Ellis,
and Douglas D. Heath. 5 vols.[115]
No knowledge of nature without experiment and observation: so said
Aristotle, so said Bacon, so acted Copernicus, Tycho Brahe,[116] Gilbert,
Kepler, Galileo, Harvey, etc., before Bacon wrote.[117] No derived
knowledge _until_ experiment and observation are concluded: so said Bacon,
and no one else. We do not mean to say that he laid down his principle in
these words, or that he carried it to the utmost extreme: we mean that
Bacon's ruling idea was the {77} collection of enormous masses of facts,
and then digested processes of arrangement and elimination, so artistically
contrived, that a man of common intelligence, without any unusual sagacity,
should be able to announce the truth sought for. Let Bacon speak for
himself, in his editor's English:
"But the course I propose for the discovery of sciences is such as leaves
but little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits and
understandings nearly on a level. For, as in the drawing of a straight line
or a perfect circle, much depends on the steadiness and practice of the
hand, if it be done by aim of hand only, but if with the aid of rule or
compass little or nothing, so it is exactly with my plan.... For my way of
discovering sciences goes far to level men's wits, and leaves but little to
individual excellence; because it performs everything by the surest rules
and demonstrations."
To show that we do not strain Bacon's meaning, we add what is said by
Hooke,[118] whom we have already mentioned as his professed disciple, and,
we believe, his only disciple of the day of Newton. We must, however,
remind the reader that Hooke was very little of a mathematician, and spoke
of algebra from his own idea of what others had told him:
"The intellect is not to be suffered to act without its helps, but is
continually to be assisted by some method or engine, which shall be as a
guide to regulate its actions, so as that it shall not be able to act
amiss. Of this engine, no man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any
thoughts and he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch; but there is
yet somewhat more to be added, which he seemed to want time to complete. By
this, as by that {78} art of algebra in geometry, 'twill be very easy to
proceed in any natural inquiry, regularly and certainly.... For as 'tis
very hard for the most acute wit to find out any difficult problem in
geometry without the help of algebra ... and altogether as easy for the
meanest capacity acting by that method to complete and perfect it, so will
it be in the inquiry after natural knowledge."
Bacon did not live to mature the whole of this plan. Are we really to
believe that if he had completed the _Instauratio_ we who write this--and
who feel ourselves growing bigger as we write it--should have been on a
level with Newton in physical discovery? Bacon asks this belief of us, and
does not get it. But it may be said, Your business is with what he _did_
leave, and with its consequences. Be it so. Mr. Ellis says: "That his
method is impracticable cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect not only
that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which
scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to
appear to be in accordance with it." That this is very true is well known
to all who have studied the history of discovery: those who deny it are
bound to establish either that some great discovery has been made by
Bacon's method--we mean by the part peculiar to Bacon--or, better still, to
show that some new discovery can be made, by actually making it. No general
talk about _induction_: no reliance upon the mere fact that certain
experiments or observations have been made; let us see where _Bacon's
induction_ has been actually used or can be used. Mere induction,
_enumeratio simplex_, is spoken of by himself with contempt, as utterly
incompetent. For Bacon knew well that a thousand instances may be
contradicted by the thousand and first: so that no enumeration of
instances, however large, is "sure demonstration," so long any are left.
The immortal Harvey, who was _inventing_--we use the word in its old
sense--the circulation of the blood, while {79} Bacon was in the full flow
of thought upon his system, may be trusted to say whether, when the system
appeared, he found any likeness in it to his own processes, or what would
have been any help to him, if he had waited for the _Novum Organum_. He
said of Bacon, "He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." This has been
generally supposed to be only a sneer at the _sutor ultra crepidam_; but we
cannot help suspecting that there was more intended by it. To us, Bacon is
eminently the philosopher of _error prevented_, not of _progress
facilitated_. When we throw off the idea of being _led right_, and betake
ourselves to that of being _kept from going wrong_, we read his writings
with a sense of their usefulness, his genius, and their probable effect
upon purely experimental science, which we can be conscious of upon no
other supposition. It amuses us to have to add that the part of Aristotle's
logic of which he saw the value was the book on _refutation of fallacies_.
Now is this not the notion of things to which the bias of a practised
lawyer might lead him? In the case which is before the Court, generally
speaking, truth lurks somewhere about the facts, and the elimination of all
error will show it in the residuum. The two senses of the word _law_ come
in so as to look almost like a play upon words. The judge can apply the law
so soon as the facts are settled: the physical philosopher has to deduce
the law from the facts. Wait, says the judge, until the facts are
determined: did the prisoner take the goods with felonious intent? did the
defendant give what amounts to a warranty? or the like. Wait, says Bacon,
until all the facts, or all the obtainable facts, are brought in: apply my
rules of separation to the facts, and the result shall come out as easily
as by ruler and compasses. We think it possible that Harvey might allude to
the legal character of Bacon's notions: we can hardly conceive so acute a
man, after seeing what manner of writer Bacon was, meaning only that he was
a lawyer and had better stick to his business. We do ourselves believe that
Bacon's philosophy {80} more resembles the action of mind of a common-law
judge--not a Chancellor--than that of the physical inquirers who have been
supposed to follow in his steps. It seems to us that Bacon's argument is,
there can be nothing of law but what must be either perceptible, or
mechanically deducible, when all the results of law, as exhibited in
phenomena, are before us. Now the truth is, that the physical philosopher
has frequently to conceive law which never was in his previous thought--to
educe the unknown, not to choose among the known. Physical discovery would
be very easy work if the inquirer could lay down his this, his that, and
his t'other, and say, "Now, one of these it must be; let us proceed to try
which." Often has he done this, and failed; often has the truth turned out
to be neither this, that, nor t'other. Bacon seems to us to think that the
philosopher is a judge who has to choose, upon ascertained facts, which of
known statutes is to rule the decision: he appears to us more like a person
who is to write the statute-book, with no guide except the cases and
decisions presented in all their confusion and all their conflict.
Let us take the well-known first aphorism of the _Novum Organum_:
"Man being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so
much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the
course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do
anything."
This aphorism is placed by Sir John Herschel[119] at the head of his
_Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy_: a book containing notions
of discovery far beyond any of which Bacon ever dreamed; and this because
it was written {81} after discovery, instead of before. Sir John Herschel,
in his version, has avoided the translation of _re vel mente observaverit_,
and gives us only "by his observation of the order of nature." In making
this the opening of an excellent sermon, he has imitated the theologians,
who often employ the whole time of the discourse in stuffing matter into
the text, instead of drawing matter out of it. By _observation_ he
(Herschel) means the whole course of discovery, observation, hypothesis,
deduction, comparison, etc. The type of the Baconian philosopher as it
stood in his mind, had been derived from a noble example, his own father,
William Herschel,[120] an inquirer whose processes would have been held by
Bacon to have been vague, insufficient, compounded of chance work and
sagacity, and too meagre of facts to deserve the name of induction. In
another work, his treatise on Astronomy,[121] Sir John Herschel, after
noting that a popular account can only place the reader on the threshold,
proceeds to speak as follows of all the higher departments of science. The
italics are his own:
"Admission to its sanctuary, and to the privileges and feelings of a
votary, is only to be gained by one means--_sound and sufficient knowledge
of mathematics, the great instrument of all exact inquiry, without which no
man can ever make such advances in this or any other of the higher
departments of science as can entitle him to form an independent opinion on
any subject of discussion within their range_."
How is this? Man can know no more than he gets from observation, and yet
mathematics is the great instrument of all exact inquiry. Are the results
of mathematical deduction results of observation? We think it likely that
{82} Sir John Herschel would reply that Bacon, in coupling together
_observare re_ and _observare mente_, has done what some wags said Newton
afterwards did in his study-door--cut a large hole of exit for the large
cat, and a little hole for the little cat.[122] But Bacon did no such
thing: he never included any deduction under observation. To mathematics he
had a dislike. He averred that logic and mathematics should be the
handmaids, not the mistresses, of philosophy. He meant that they should
play a subordinate and subsequent part in the dressing of the vast mass of
facts by which discovery was to be rendered equally accessible to Newton
and to us. Bacon himself was very ignorant of all that had been done by
mathematics; and, strange to say, he especially objected to astronomy being
handed over to the mathematicians. Leverrier and Adams, calculating an
unknown planet into visible existence by enormous heaps of algebra, furnish
the last comment of note on this specimen of the goodness of Bacon's views.
The following account of his knowledge of what had been done in his own day
or before it, is Mr. Spedding's collection of casual remarks in Mr. Ellis's
several prefaces:
"Though he paid great attention to astronomy, discussed carefully the
methods in which it ought to be studied, constructed for the satisfaction
of his own mind an elaborate theory of the heavens, and listened eagerly
for the news from the stars brought by Galileo's telescope, he appears to
have been utterly ignorant of the discoveries which had just been made by
Kepler's calculations. Though he complained in 1623 of the want of
compendious methods for facilitating arithmetical computations, especially
with regard to the doctrine of Series, and fully recognized the importance
of them as an aid to physical inquiries--he does not say a word about
Napier's Logarithms, which had been published only nine years before and
reprinted more than once in the {83} interval. He complained that no
considerable advance had made in geometry beyond Euclid, without taking any
notice of what had been done by Archimedes and Apollonius. He saw the
importance of determining accurately the specific gravity of different
substances, and himself attempted to form a table of them by a rude process
of his own, without knowing of the more scientific though still imperfect
methods previously employed by Archimedes, Ghetaldus,[123] and Porta. He
speaks of the [Greek: heureka] of Archimedes in a manner which implies that
he did not clearly apprehend either the nature of the problem to be solved
or the principles upon which the solution depended. In reviewing the
progress of mechanics, he makes no mention of Archimedes himself, or of
Stevinus,[124] Galileo, Guldinus,[125] or Ghetaldus. He makes no allusion
to the theory of equilibrium. He observes that a ball of one pound weight
will fall nearly as fast through the air as a ball of two, without alluding
to the theory of the acceleration of falling bodies, which had been made
known by Galileo more than thirty years before. He proposes an inquiry with
regard to the lever--namely, whether in a balance with arms of different
length but equal weight the distance from the fulcrum has any effect upon
the inclination,--though the theory of the lever was as well understood in
his own time as it is now. In making an experiment {84} of his own to
ascertain the cause of the motion of a windmill, he overlooks an obvious
circumstance which makes the experiment inconclusive, and an equally
obvious variation of the same experiment which would have shown him that
his theory was false. He speaks of the poles of the earth as fixed, in a
manner which seems to imply that he was not acquainted with the precession
of the equinoxes; and in another place, of the north pole being above and
the south pole below, as a reason why in our hemisphere the north winds
predominate over the south."
Much of this was known before, but such a summary of Bacon's want of
knowledge of the science of his own time was never yet collected in one
place. We may add, that Bacon seems to have been as ignorant of
Wright's[126] memorable addition to the resources of navigation as of
Napier's addition to the means of calculation. Mathematics was beginning to
be the great instrument of exact inquiry: Bacon threw the science aside,
from ignorance, just at the time when his enormous sagacity, applied to
knowledge, would have made him see the part it was to play. If Newton had
taken Bacon for his master, not he, but somebody else, would have been
Newton.[127]