Baconian method

The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum (1620), or 'New Method', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle's Organon. This method was influential upon the development of the scientific method in modern science; but also more generally in the early modern rejection of medieval Aristotelianism.

Bacon's method is an example of the application of inductive reasoning. However, Bacon's method of induction is much more complex than the essential inductive process of making generalizations from observations. Bacon's method begins with description of the requirements for making the careful, systematic observations necessary to produce quality facts. He then proceeds to use induction, the ability to generalize from a set of facts to one or more axioms. However, he stresses the necessity of not generalizing beyond what the facts truly demonstrate. The next step may be to gather additional data, or the researcher may use existing data and the new axioms to establish additional axioms. Specific types of facts can be particularly useful, such as negative instances, exceptional instances and data from experiments. The whole process is repeated in a stepwise fashion to build an increasingly complex base of knowledge, but one which is always supported by observed facts, or more generally speaking, empirical data.

He argues in the Novum Organum that our only hope for building true knowledge is through this careful method. Old knowledge-building methods were often not based in facts, but on broad, ill-proven deductions and metaphysical conjecture. Even when theories were based in fact, they were often broad generalizations and/or abstractions from few instances of casually gathered observations. Using Bacon's process, man could start fresh, setting aside old superstitions, over-generalizations, and traditional (often unproven) "facts". Researchers could slowly but accurately build an essential base of knowledge from the ground up. Describing then-existing knowledge, Bacon claims:

There is the same degree of licentiousness and error in forming axioms as [there is] in abstracting notions, and [also] in the first principles, which depend in common induction [versus Bacon's induction]; still more is this the case in axioms and inferior propositions derived from syllogisms.

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