Publisher's Synopsis
From the beginning of Chapter I - The New Science
The new science, or the new experimental philosophy, arose in England as a fresh intellectual impulse, too subtle and too penetrating to be readily confined within the bonds of a definition. Its manifestations may be observed, its more obvious qualities may be studied, yet back of all these there is an elusive psychological problem that fairly challenges solution. As the waters of a stream are lost in the sea, where they are driven by unknown forces to break on unexpected shores, so new ideas entering the minds of men are lost to analysis only to reappear as new points of view, new methods of thinking, new attitudes toward life. Straightway men possessed of these new ideas set to work reforming human thought. Similarly, experimental philosophers in seventeenth century England, quickened by this new intellectual impulse, began to lay, broad and deep, the foundations for reconstructing the natural history of the world.
Scientific interest had existed in England long before the seventeenth century, of course, and can be called a new interest in that period only in the sense that it received a new impetus. This new impulse came from the influence of four men, two foreigners and two Englishmen, Galileo and Descartes, Bacon and Harvey. When Galileo made his telescope and saw the proof of the Copernican theory, there was introduced the fundamental new principle, - namely, the application of mechanical apparatus to the solution of the problems of natural philosophy. "Since that Galileo," wrote John Wallis, "and (after him) Torricelli, and others have applied Mechanick Principles to the salving of Philosophical Difficulties; Natural Philosophy is well known to have been rendered more intelligible, and to have made a much greater progress in less than a hundred years, than before for many ages." To Bacon is attributed the inductive method for scientific research, although as Professor Adamson truthfully says, "it is more than probable that in all fairness, when we speak of the Baconian reform of science, we should refer to the forgotten Monk of the thirteenth century rather than to the brilliant and famous Chancellor of the seventeenth." The new philosophers themselves were not familiar with the work of "Friar Bacon," while they persistently praised and honored the chancellor, and followed as well as they could his precepts as they found them in the Novum Organum. They became his disciples and "were not slow in carrying out the plan of a learned society as sketched in the New Atlantis." To him is due, then, the working hypothesis-the inductive method-, wherein a long and careful process of experimentation and observation must precede the drawing of conclusions.
The third element was furnished by Descartes. He was a mathematician as well as a philosopher, and hence could bring mathematical accuracy and precision to the aid of philosophical thinking. His great service, therefore, lay in his reducing to formulae the facts gleaned from experiment and observation. "Monsieur Descartes did not perfectly tread in his (Bacon's) Steps, since he was for doing too great a part of his work in his Closet, concluding too soon, before he had made Experiments enough; but then to a vast Genius he joined exquisite Skill in Geometry, and working upon Intelligible Principles and an Intelligible Manner obtained his results." He also joined forces with Bacon against the power of ancient authority. "Bacon shares with Descartes the honour of inaugurating the modern period of philosophy. Bacon's protest against the principle of authority, a principle which had been accepted with more or less unhesitating loyalty by the Scholastic philosophers, is no less vigorous than that of Descartes. Both alike are eager to substitute for faith and tradition the independent effort of the individual mind in pursuit of truth.'"
