| Автор: | Bacon Francis |
| Издательство: | Public Domain |
| Серия: | |
| Жанр произведения: | Зарубежная классика |
| Год издания: | 0 |
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Because it was idle to draw a logical conclusion from false principles, error being propagated as much by false premises, which logic does not pretend to examine, as by illegitimate inference. Hence, as Bacon says further on, men being easily led to confound legitimate inference with truth, were confirmed in their errors by the very subtilty of their genius.
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Because it was idle to draw a logical conclusion from false principles, error being propagated as much by false premises, which logic does not pretend to examine, as by illegitimate inference. Hence, as Bacon says further on, men being easily led to confound legitimate inference with truth, were confirmed in their errors by the very subtilty of their genius. —
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Bacon uses the term in its ancient sense, and means one who, knowing the occult properties of bodies, is able to startle the ignorant by drawing out of them wonderful and unforeseen changes. See the 85th aphorism of this book, and the 5th cap. book iii. of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, where he speaks more clearly. —
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By this term axiomata, Bacon here speaks of general principles, or universal laws. In the 19th aphorism he employs the term to express any proposition collected from facts by induction, and thus fitted to become the starting-point of deductive reasoning. In the last and more rigorous sense of the term, Bacon held they arose from experience. See Whewell’s “Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,” vol. i. p. 74; and Mill’s “Logic,” vol. i. p. 311; and the June “Quarterly,” 1841, for the modern phase of the discussion. —
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Bacon here attributes to the Aristotelian logic the erroneous consequences which sprung out of its abuse. The demonstrative forms it exhibits, whether verbally or mathematically expressed, are necessary to the support, verification, and extension of induction, and when the propositions they embrace are founded on an accurate and close observation of facts, the conclusions to which they lead, even in moral science, may be regarded as certain as the facts wrested out of nature by direct experiment. In physics such forms are absolutely required to generalize the results of experience, and to connect intermediate axioms with laws still more general, as is sufficiently attested by the fact, that no science since Bacon’s day has ceased to be experimental by the mere method of induction, and that all become exact only so far as they rise above experience, and connect their isolated phenomena with general laws by the principles of deductive reasoning. So far, then, are these forms from being useless, that they are absolutely essential to the advancement of the sciences, and in no case can be looked on as detrimental, except when obtruded in the place of direct experiment, or employed as a means of deducing conclusions about nature from imaginary hypotheses and abstract conceptions. This had been unfortunately the practice of the Greeks. From the rapid development geometry received in their hands, they imagined the same method would lead to results equally brilliant in natural science, and snatching up some abstract principle, which they carefully removed from the test of experiment, imagined they could reason out from it all the laws and external appearances of the universe. The scholastics were impelled along the same path, not only by precedent, but by profession. Theology was the only science which received from them a consistent development, and the
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It would appear from this and the two preceding aphorisms, that Bacon fell into the error of denying the utility of the syllogism in the very part of inductive science where it is essentially required. Logic, like mathematics, is purely a formal process, and must, as the scaffolding to the building, be employed to arrange facts in the structure of a science, and not to form any portion of its groundwork, or to supply the materials of which the system is to be composed. The word syllogism, like most other psychological terms, has no fixed or original signification, but is sometimes employed, as it was by the Greeks, to denote general reasoning, and at others to point out the formal method of deducing a particular inference from two or more general propositions. Bacon does not confine the term within the boundaries of express definition, but leaves us to infer that he took it in the latter sense, from his custom of associating the term with the wranglings of the schools. The scholastics, it is true, abused the deductive syllogism, by employing it in its naked, skeleton-like form, and confounding it with the whole breadth of logical theory; but their errors are not to be visited on Aristotle, who never dreamed of playing with formal syllogisms, and, least of all, mistook the descending for the ascending series of inference. In our mind we are of accord with the Stagyrite, who propounds, as far as we can interpret him, two modes of investigating truth – the one by which we ascend from particular and singular facts to general laws and axioms, and the other by which we descend from universal propositions to the individual cases which they virtually include. Logic, therefore, must equally vindicate the formal purity of the synthetic illation by which it ascends to the whole, as the analytic process by which it descends to the parts. The deductive and inductive syllogism are of equal significance in building up any body of truth, and whoever restricts logic to either process, mistakes one-half of its province for the whole; and if he acts upon his error, will paralyze his methods, and strike the noblest part of science with sterility. —
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The Latin is,
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This Borgia was Alexander VI., and the expedition alluded to that in which Charles VIII. overran the Italian peninsula in five months. Bacon uses the same illustration in concluding his survey of natural philosophy, in the second book of the “De Augmentis.” —
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