Francis Bacon — "The true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human lif…"
The true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers.
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More from Francis Bacon
"The mind of man is subject to three diseases; namely, to be too credulous, to be too incredulous, or to be too curious."
"Ambition is like a choler, which makes an ill digestion, but a good appetite."
"The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding."
"It is a thing that ever holds, that a man is never so much an atheist as when he is most superstitious."
"For in the mind of man, there is a natural evil, a natural darkness, which, unless it be purged and illuminated, will ever be prone to error."
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.