On Francis Bacon's Originality

Abstract

While preparing the massive Oxford critical edition of Francis Bacon's Norum Organum, I became increasingly aware of the seriousness with which he made the claim that he had made an original and momentous contribution to the advancement of the sciences and human welfare. I also became acutely conscious of the fact that while his philosophy had been treated with critical reverence in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, its reputation suffered a severe decline in the 20th. On the whole historians, philosophers, scientists, . and critics in the last century were impressed by a number of conventional charges cumulatively laid at Bacon's door, charges whose egregious tenacity may destine them to be repeated until the crack of doom. 2 In fact, I hesitate to mention them for fear of giving them renewed and undeserved vigour. But here goes: Bacon paid insufficient attention to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Harvey; he misunderstood or rejected many of the most important theories and discoveries of his day; he failed utterly to understand the importance of mathematics in the emergence of the new sciences of the 17th century; his inductive 'method' was unworkable; and he had absolutely no discoveries whatever to his credit. When they are not anachronistic junk, the counts in this dismal indictment are misleading or plain wrong. They spring from an outmoded historiography, which persuaded its practitioners to search for 'founders' or 'fathers' of modern science-a drearily retrospective exercise if ever there was one. To qualify as a 'father' a philosopher