In What Ways Are Descartes and Bacon Alike?

Francis Bacon helped change Europe ideologically through his understanding of science. Bacon strove to create and understand new outlines for all of science, but focused mainly on scientific methods. He did so by introducing his own method called the Baconian, or inductive, approach. This approach brought a new understanding on how to gather information and how to form more logical conclusions. In one of his late writings, New Atlantis, Bacon described culture in a scientific and idealized way. In summary, the book’s meaning was that science should foster technology, which should foster better life. With his own approach to the scientific method and his understanding of the importance of implementing technology into human lives, Bacon played a big role in the ideological advancement throughout Europe.

Both men come across interesting characters to say the least. They were interested and curious when it came to these characters, and felt the need to investigate them, often leading to misfortune. Though this is not positive, it is a similarity.

Relationship to theme: Bacon and Descartes created new philosophies on knowledge, which made science a

14. ’05 Compare and contrast the motives and actions of Martin Luther in the German states and King Henry VIII in England in bringing about religious change during the Reformation.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes the reader through a methodological exercise in philosophical enquiry. After stripping the intellect of all doubtful and false beliefs, he re-examines the nature and structure of being in an attempt to secure a universally valid epistemology free from skepticism. Hoping for the successful reconciliation of science and theology, Descartes works to reconstruct a new foundation of absolute and certain truth to act as a catalyst for future scientific research by “showing that a mathematical [rational-objective] physics of the world is attainable by creatures with our intellectual capacities and faculties” (Shand 1994, p.

Secondly, Descartes, by embarking on this reconstruction of his thoughts, hopes to find a stable basis for the sciences. Since Descartes was trained as a mathematician, he likes to find proofs for ideas, so that he can know them with absolute certainty. Initially, he believes philosophy to be the basis for the sciences “insofar as they [the sciences] borrow their principles from philosophy.” However, he concludes that philosophy cannot be the basis for the sciences, saying, “one could not have built anything upon such unstable foundations.” Now, he has to find a stronger foundation for the sciences and it is only through the reconstruction of his thought that he is able to do this.

In Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method he expresses his disappointment with traditional philosophy and with the limitations of theology; only logic, geometry and algebra hold his respect, because of the utter certainty which they can offer us. Unfortunately, because they depend on hypotheses, they cannot tell us what is real, i.e. what the world is really like. Therefore Descartes suggests a method of thought combining the consistency of mathematics but based on natural truths about what is real, basic knowledge which could not be wrong (like the axioms of geometry). He calls into question everything that he thinks he has learned through his senses but rests his entire system on the one truth that he cannot doubt, namely, the reality of his own mind and the radical difference between the mental and the physical aspects of the world.

During the seventeenth century, the scientific revolution in Europe was at its peak, changing people’s lives through the new techniques of the scientific method. Citizens of western civilizations had previously used religion as the lens through which they perceived their beliefs and customs in their communities. Before the scientific revolution, science and religion were intertwined, and people were taught to accept religious laws and doctrines without questioning; the Church was the ultimate authority on how the world worked. However, during this revolution, scientists were inspired to learn and understand the laws of the universe had created, a noble and controversial move toward truth seeking. The famous scientists of the time, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, were known to be natural philosophers, intending to reveal God’s mystery and understand (through proof) the majesty of God. Throughout previous centuries, people had hypothesized how the world and natural phenomenon may work, and new Protestant ideals demanded constant interrogation and examination. Nevertheless, some of these revelations went against the Church’s teachings and authority. If people believed the Church could be wrong, then they could question everything around them, as well. As a result, the introduction of the scientific method, a process by which scientists discovered and proved new theories, was revolutionary because it distinguished what could be proved as real from what was simply

Salviati rationality is evident when he states that he reproaches “those who give themselves up as slaves to him in such a way as to subscribe blindly to everything,” encouraging people to rather challenge perscribed ideas and form new paths in their thinking processes through their sensory experiences. } Galileo’s reasoning Bacon’s dialogue similarly displays that there are many faults in the rationalist perspective that are detrimental to learning, as he also states that there needs to be more variation to learning through the senses. Bacon describes how the “great restoration of learning and knowledge” is possible “if you are led by the evidence of your senses” (page 4).Bacon’s reasoning needs to be addressed Bacon and Galileo both insist that in in order to attain knowledge we must first beging (began) with evidence from our senses and then everything else we know depends comes from these sensory experiences are what will construct influence our thinking processes and

The methods of empiricism continued to spread with little restraint. An Irish bishop and philosopher, George Berkeley, contributed to the empirical movement in the early eighteenth century. He deduced that the arguments employed by Locke supporting that secondary qualities exist only in the mind of the

Aristotle observed that the ‘validity of any argument can be determined by its structure rather than its content.’ Bacon’s writing rejects this and focuses on deductive reasoning. He describes science as the more appropriate way of thinking as it uses real life analysis and facts that can be tested and proven instead of pure judgement, predominately focusing on the aspect of nature to subvert these norms. Patterson, amongst many other intellectuals validates Bacon’s point by testifying how ‘Aristotle’s modal syllogistic is almost incomprehensible because of its many faults and

One way in which Descartes and Locke differ is their opinions of how knowledge is attained. Descartes ascertained that you could only gain knowledge through reasoning and not reasoning and senses together. He concluded that senses can deceive us and should not be trusted. Descartes states, “I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are illusions. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain!” (Descartes). Descartes identified the mind as a thinking substance and bodies as material substances. Descartes is a rationalist, as he believed knowledge could be gained without experiencing it in the real world.

While the modern vision of scientific civilization, developed by Sir Francis Bacon in 17th century England, and the ways science is actually practiced in the world today both pursued objective truth, Bacon’s vision and the ways science is actually practiced today differ in their methods of pursuing truth. The modern vision of science and the ways science is actually practiced today both pursue objective truth in order to benefit humanity. Bacon’s modern vision pursued truth using experience differed from the ways that science is practiced today, using an accepted source to determine truth. The modern vision of science and the ways science is actually practiced today both pursue objective truth in order to benefit humanity by increasing

1, pp. 156–9). He expressed admiration for Bacon’s Novum Organum, Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, and the work of ancient and recent atomists, although he says that in his early days he refrained from reading them carefully because he feared that he might be seduced by their reliance on pure reason rather than observation and experiment. He hoped to provide empirical evidence relevant to their views.

Francis Bacon states in section XIX that “There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, yet untried.” These are the two ways in which Bacon proposes to