Francis Bacon: “Methodist,” Not Theorist

Francis Bacon’s New Organon, published in 1620, could hardly have a more apt title. It was an allusion to Aristotle’s six works on logic, collectively called the Organon (the “tool”). The title is so apt because Bacon’s main achievement was to dethrone Aristotle from his position as the unmoved mover of Western intellectual life. From the 13th well into the 17th century, Aristotle’s words were commands in the universities. If Aristotle said it, that settled it.

Aristotelianism became ever more rigid as time went on. The ancient philosopher was the unsurpassed master of knowledge, and no one, it was believed, would ever surpass him. The glory days were over; history was winding down. Until Bacon, that optimistic watchmaker, wound up history once more and showed that future natural philosophers might actually surpass Aristotle—not because they would match Aristotle’s genius, but because they could use a method that would progressively accumulate more knowledge than even the greatest genius could produce by himself.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, what is lacking in the New Organon is an actual theory of knowledge. Bacon is a “methodist” (no affinity to John Wesley), not a theorist. Galileo, Newton, Hobbes, Locke, Hume—they all had a theory of knowledge. Bacon did not. Perhaps that was due to the fact that he was a lawyer rather than a philosopher.

Be that as it may, it is legitimate to ask about Bacon’s lack of a clear epistemological framework for his method. Did he make assumptions about knowledge that actually do not stand closer examination? In what way does his lack of an epistemological theory cast doubt on the validity of his proposed method? Can the method stand on its own or does it need such a framework? Also, have modern scientists in the 2oth century largely reverted back to Bacon’s naivety, so that now it is mostly philosophers of science, but not scientists themselves, who continue to discuss the epistemological framework and assumptions of different scientific methods?