The Methods of Bacon and Descartes

Francis Bacon was lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Despite these worthy pursuits, he is best known for his numerous essays which, among other things, declared his ideas on the established sciences and proposed a better scientific method that would help to define the conduct of experimentation and theorizing in the modern world. Bacon's greatest criticism of the old system was that the promoted laws were far too general and not founded on any evidence. For this reason, he attempted to counter this in his own method. He thought of "gradual ascent," an idea where small generalizations were made then proven, leading the experimenter to make larger and larger proven assumptions until a law is formed. He also suggested the process of eliminations where, if one case is contrary to a statement, than the statement is completely false. He described this as "the greater force of the negative instance." For data analysis and collection he used tables where he recorded the specific property or condition of a tested case. The only problem with this part of the method was that he often assumed that any property of the reaction would be obvious, not subtle. Though Bacon's system was a vast improvement on the standing one, he was still wary of making a final statement founded on his evidence - he was afraid that his own laws would become like the old ones, proven by false evidence.

The French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes worked more in both specifics and generalizations. Though he often wrote his own essays in Latin, he did publish a book in French called Discourse on Method such that all of his own country could know and understand his discoveries not through blind acceptance, but through the reasoning that he carefully laid out in writing. This book was divided into three sections, each of which explained his system for arriving at his personal ideas on the law of refraction, the rainbow, and analytical geometry. He also developed further the mathematical work on "representing" (using variables for both known and unknown constants) as well as the use of superscripts and subscripts. The development of these two things helped to simplify or at least clarify algebraic problems. In his book, Descartes also put forth his moral code for science, which Britannica aptly described in the following words: "(1) obey local customs and laws, (2) make decisions on the best evidence and then stick to them firmly as though they were certain, (3) change desires rather than the world, and (4) always seek truth."

Both men were important to the development of a new scientific method, although their approaches were quite different. Bacon seemed to be more concerned with possible ways of collecting and analyzing information, while Descartes cared more about creating general moral ideas for experimentation as well as making calculation easier during the analytical process. Bacon and Descartes were both highly prolific (although Descartes held back from publishing Discourse on Method for fear of the church) and their work was fairly accessible to the people in general.

Thesis: Bacon and Descartes may have hurt the presence of the Church in Europe through their encouragement of the belief that acceptance of an idea should be founded on more than just blind faith. On the other hand, giving the public knowledge of a more developed scientific method allowed the people of Europe to begin looking at the world more scientifically, and gave them the opportunity to better understand and judge evidence given for a statement on the natural laws of the world.