Francis Bacon — "The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, and not when…"
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, and not when it misses.
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More from Francis Bacon
"Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them."
"Imperial expansion is preferable to civil war, and that Britain is faced with something of a binary choice."
"The Idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words, …"
"In studies, whatsoever a man learneth, he must learn it as if he were to teach it."
"The arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self."
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.