Francis Bacon and René Descartes

Look up René Descartes and Francis Bacon. WRITE a post on the class blog comparing their approaches and positing a thesis about how their scientific methods might have upended religions doctrine and empowered people in Europe.

Francis Bacon and René Descartes were major figures during the scientific revolution. They were major contributors to philosophy and science. The key to Bacon and Descartes' success in upending religious doctrine was their ability to approach ideas with an open mind, rather than just accepting what they are given. It is very easy to believe what one is told without question, and this is exactly what Descartes and Bacon were against. The difficulty of fighting against basically the entire continent is one that Descartes and Bacon worked past in order to achieve revolutionary findings. Particularly in this time period, going against conformation is something that was practically unheard of, as well as dangerous.

Francis Bacon was particularly famous for his method that he helped develop called the scientific method. The purpose of this is to develop a way to set up experiments in the most effective way. Using the scientific method, one can create an experiment that makes sure to explain all findings and only come up with conclusions based on strong supporting evidence. He used his own ideas about having accurate findings to draw conclusions to create a way to have everyone think differently about validity of claims. Before the development of the scientific method (also known as the Baconian method) ideas, particularly regarding existence, creation, and evolution, were just trusted by people and accepted as facts, without people questioning the accuracy of statements. Because of Bacon, people began to develop their own experiments with an open mind, which led to various new scientific findings that were never even thought of before. The development of the scientific method was a prime factor in the success of the scientific revolution. Still today people use the method to conduct experiments.

René Descartes was a religious skeptic whose goal was to find evidence to disprove religion. He immediately distrusted religious doctrines, so his idea was to start from the beginning, not believing any religious ideas and trying to prove everything for himself. Just like Bacon, Descartes thought that people shouldn't just trust whatever they are told, but instead should try to figure things out themselves. He believed that claims without evidence deserved to be completely disregarded and people should instead try to disprove these things and find evidence for other ideas. However, another idea that Descartes thought of was in the mathematics field. Descartes was in charge of developing the Cartesian Coordinate Plane. This was revolutionary in the mathematics world because it created a way to visualize math equations and how they relate in shape and size. Still today the Cartesian Coordinate Plane is very important and is taught in schools worldwide.