Francis Bacon — "The froward retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as innovation."
The froward retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as innovation.
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More from Francis Bacon
"The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, and not when it misses."
"He that hath wife and children, hath given hostages to fortune."
"The inquiry, knowledge, and belief of truth, is the sovereign good of human nature."
"The opinion of plenty is among the principal causes of want."
"There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion."
About Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
English philosopher whose Novum Organum (1620) laid out the inductive method that became the foundation of modern empirical science. Closely associated with Galileo Galilei (contemporary scientific revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Aristotelian scholasticism, the syllogistic, deductive philosophical tradition that ruled medieval universities — Bacon's Novum Organum literally means 'new instrument' — the explicit replacement for Aristotle's Organon. The entire scientific revolution turned on which logic was correct: deduction from authority or induction from observation.
The standard scholarly entry points to Francis Bacon's work: Lisa Jardine (Queen Mary University of London, Renaissance scholar) — Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (1974); Jonathan Marwil (Michigan, intellectual historian) — The Trials of Counsel: Francis Bacon in 1621 (1976); Perez Zagorin (Rochester, historian of ideas) — Francis Bacon (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Francis Bacon.