The great instauration. The great instauration : science, medicine and reform, 1626 2022-11-17
The great instauration
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The Great Instauration, also known as the Great Renewal, is a term coined by philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon in the early 17th century. It refers to Bacon's vision of a comprehensive overhaul and rejuvenation of the way in which knowledge is pursued and disseminated.
Bacon believed that the current state of knowledge was inadequate and misguided, and that a radical change was needed in order to truly advance and understand the world around us. He argued that the pursuit of knowledge had become too reliant on tradition and authority, and that it needed to be grounded in empirical observation and experimentation.
To achieve this Great Instauration, Bacon proposed a new method of scientific inquiry known as the "scientific method." This method involved making observations, forming hypotheses, testing those hypotheses through experimentation, and drawing conclusions based on the results. Bacon believed that this method, which is still in use today, would allow for a more objective and reliable understanding of the world.
In addition to his work on the scientific method, Bacon also argued for the importance of practical knowledge and its application in the real world. He believed that the pursuit of knowledge should not be an end in itself, but rather a means to improving the human condition and solving practical problems.
Overall, the Great Instauration was a revolutionary concept that sought to fundamentally transform the way in which knowledge was pursued and applied. Its influence can still be seen today in the importance placed on empirical observation and experimentation in the scientific community, as well as the emphasis on practical applications of knowledge.
The Great Instauration by Sir Francis Bacon, Paperback
So it is but a device for exempting ignorance from ignominy. Bacon's ideas were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas Browne, who in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica 1646—72 frequently adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries. As originally invented they are commonly rude, clumsy, and shapeless; afterwards they acquire new powers and more commodious arrangements and constructions, in so far that men shall sooner leave the study and pursuit of them and turn to something else than they arrive at the ultimate perfection of which they are capable. But then they did not provide helps for the sense and understanding, as I have done, but simply took away all their authority; which is quite a different thing — almost the reverse. The completion, however, of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes.
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The Great Instauration eBook by Francis Bacon
For the subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself, even when assisted by exquisite instruments — such experiments, I mean, as are skillfully and artificially devised for the express purpose of determining the point in question. But if he had desired to see the Spirit of Chastity of Bensalem, it would have appeared to him in the likeness of a fair beautiful Cherubim. For however various are the forms of civil polities, there is but one form of polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be popular. And then the way is still to be made by the uncertain light of the sense, sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over, through the woods of experience and particulars; while those who offer themselves for guides are as was said themselves also puzzled, and increase the number of errors and wanderers. .
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Francis Bacon: Great Instauration (1620)
So much for the first part of the work. And if there have been any who, not binding themselves either to other men's opinions or to their own, but loving liberty, have desired to engage others along with themselves in search, these, though honest in intention, have been weak in endeavor. Of induction, the logicians seem hardly to have taken any serious thought, but they pass it by with a slight notice and hasten on to the formulae of disputation. My next, that in flying from this evil they fall not into the opposite error, which they will surely do if they think that the inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted or forbidden. New Atlantis ; and, the Great Instauration I wasn't into it to be fair, that's not a fault of the book, I just don't like reading 17th century text.
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FBRT
Bacon illustrates these stages, or some of them, with certain key books, not all of them bearing his name. For I do not endeavor either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even by the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty; which might easily be done by one who sought to give luster to his own name rather than light to other men's minds. For in adding to the total you necessarily alter the parts and sections; and the received divisions of the sciences are fitted only to the received sum of them as it stands now. So that the state of learning as it now is appears to be represented to the life in the old fable of Scylla, who had the head and face of a virgin, but her womb was hung round with barking monsters, from which she could not be delivered. For besides that I hope my speculations may, in virtue of my continual conversancy with nature, have a value beyond the pretensions of my wit, they will serve in the meantime for wayside inns, in which the mind may rest and refresh itself on its journey to more certain conclusions. New Atlantis and The Great Instauration are two of Bacon's great historical works aimed at achieving his goal.
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The great instauration : science, medicine and reform, 1626
For all those who before me have applied themselves to the invention of arts have but cast a glance or two upon facts and examples and experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give them oracles. For in the ordinary logic almost all the work is spent about the syllogism. Nevertheless I wish it to be understood in the meantime that they are conclusions by which as not being discovered and proved by the true form of interpretation I do not at all mean to bind myself. And as the intention is different, so, accordingly, is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action. The requests I have to make are these. He was a famous lawyer, statesmen, historian, and one of history's greatest defenders of modern science. For all those who before me have applied themselves to the invention of arts have but cast a glance or two upon facts and examples and experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give them oracles.
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New atlantis and the great instauration summary. New Atlantis ; and the Great Instauration Summary and Analysis (like SparkNotes). 2022
For the induction of which the logicians speak, which proceeds by simple enumeration, is a puerile thing, concludes at hazard, is always liable to be upset by a contradictory instance, takes into account only what is known and ordinary, and leads to no result. Such then are the provisions I make for finding the genuine light of nature and kindling and bringing it to bear. It seems to me that men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Some there are indeed who have committed themselves to the waves of experience and almost turned mechanics, yet these again have in their very experiments pursued a kind of wandering inquiry, without any regular system of operations. In laying out the divisions of the sciences, however, I take into account not only things already invented and known, but likewise things omitted which ought to be there. To the second part, therefore, belongs the doctrine concerning the better and more perfect use of human reason in the inquisition of things, and the true helps of the understanding, that thereby as far as the condition of mortality and humanity allows the intellect may be raised and exalted, and made capable of overcoming the difficulties and obscurities of nature.
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The Great Instauration
Philosophy is composed of the thoughts of the mind, some of them being speculations or ideas, and some of them being knowledge. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures. This doctrine, then, of the expurgation of the intellect to qualify it for dealing with truth is comprised in three refutations: the refutation of the philosophies; the refutation of the demonstrations; and the refutation of the natural human reason. There is none who has dwelt upon experience and the facts of nature as long as is necessary. But I design not only to indicate and mark out the ways, but also to enter them. For it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it.
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The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, And Reform, 1626 1660 by Charles Webster
And for its value and utility it must be plainly avowed that that wisdom which we have derived principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk, but it cannot generate, for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works. For I do not make so blindly for the end of my journey as to neglect anything useful that may turn up by the way. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man. But for this accident which I speak of, I wish that if there be any good in what I have to offer, it may be ascribed to the infinite mercy and goodness of God, and to the felicity of your Majesty's times; to which as I have been an honest and affectionate servant in my life, so after my death I may yet perhaps, through the kindling of this new light in the darkness of philosophy, be the means of making this age famous to posterity; and surely to the times of the wisest and most learned of kings belongs of right the regeneration and restoration of the sciences. For it was not that pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge whereby Adam gave names to the creatures according to their propriety, which, gave occasion to the fall. The Forerunners; or Anticipations of the New Philosophy 6. For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts; not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works.
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The Great Instauration
Partitions of the Sciences 2. Then again, to speak of subtlety: I seek out and get together a kind of experiments much subtler and simpler than those which occur accidentally. But the innate are inherent in the very nature of the intellect, which is far more prone to error than the sense is. My first admonition which was also my prayer is that men confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect of things divine: for the sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but seals and shuts up the face of heaven. For there are found in the intellectual as in the terrestrial globe waste regions as well as cultivated ones. For better it is to make a beginning of that which may lead to something, than to engage in a perpetual struggle and pursuit in courses which have no exit.
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