[...]
>
>A recent example comes from the pen of Professor R.J. Berry.
>"God and the biologist" was published in 1996 by Apollos (an
>imprint of Inter-Varsity Press). Chapter 2 has the title
>"Reason" and is a brief historical run through the rise of modern
>science. Bacon gets only a passing mention, but a footnote draws
>attention to his importance:
> "Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an exemplar of the death of
>scholasticism; he explicitly rejected the deductive logic of
>Aristotle and the Greeks, and stressed the importance of
>experiment and inductive reasoning, that is, that humans are the
>servants and interpreters of nature, that truth is not derived
>from authority and that knowledge is the fruit of experience".
>(p.12)
>
I've been keeping out of the discussion about Bacon since I consider
myself pretty inept when it comes to theology, philosophy, or
philosophy of science. As an experimentalist, though, its really hard to
find any fault with the above description of Bacon's thought.
Someone told me that Aristotle (I think it was) had this theory
that women had fewer teeth than men. He supported this with
various types of solid arguments. For some reason it never occurred
to him to open his wifes mouth and count how many teeth she had ;-).
Alas, it seems now my interest has been tweaked. Can anyone
suggest a good introductory book about Bacon?
One of my favorite "famous dead guys" is Pascal. I haven't read a
lot of what other people say Pascal said, but I have read what
Pascal said and I find a lot of agreement with the above paragraph.
For example, there is the "argument" with Descartes (and others)
over whether its possible to have a vacuum. Descartes dismissed
the possibility on philosophical grounds alone. Pascal's approach
was to forget that nonsense and see if one can settle the point
experimetally.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University