Francis Bacon was the precursor of modern scientific thought. Also known as “Lord Kelvin,” he served as Lord Admiral of the British and prime minister of England from 1792 to 1794. Prior to that time, people were unsure about their proper place in society, with many being either poor or ignorant. Bacon, though, became one of the most influential thinkers of his time.
Francis Bacon served as prime minister and attorney general of England, resigning amid accusations of corruption. His most valuable work was philosophical, examining the philosophy of religion and proposing an inductive, empirical approach to all issues. In his works, Bacon presents ideas that are later taken up by seventeenth-century scientists such as Isaac Newton and Galileo. He is credited with popularizing the theories of induction, probability, and probability principles, including his theory of the infallibility of the scientific laws of nature.
One of the most influential proponents of the new philosophy is Francis Bacon, who died in 1774. At the time of his death, Bacon wrote to a friend, “I am now going to make a philosophical survey of my life and death, and find out if there is anything philosophical in what I have done or any thing worth while in life.” He further stated, “The science which has the authority to set forth by actual experiments the physical phenomena, may be called a super-sciences. The science which can tell us by certain inner signs whether things happened in a past time and place is called metaphysics.” In his Essays and Treatises, he repeatedly presents ideas that have become influential in the subsequent era.
Among his ideas that have had long-reaching effects on the subsequent science is his thesis that knowledge is the product of the mind of man and that reason is man’s only means of discovering reality. His ideas on induction prove important in this context. According to him, man can form his ideas without any assistance and can organize his mental faculties so as to know the facts after making a particular analysis of it. Similarly, in his Essays and Reviews, he defines the term “hypothesis” as a proposition that can be rejected without evidence. In this way, he teaches the importance of inductive arguments.
However, in his Dictionary of Descriptive Terms, he uses the term “hypothesis” in a less technical way and denies the possibility of an induction. Instead of accepting a hypothesis as a fact, he insists that it should be subjected to the test of the scientific methods. In this way, he avoids the errors of the syllogistic. This makes his defense of the scientific methods even stronger.
The great philosopher and scientist Sir Isaac Newton, though he was a deist, nevertheless contributed largely to the advance of scientific thought. In his Institutes of Surgery, published in 1687, he laid the basis of the modern scientific methods by adopting an absolute as well as a transcendental principle of faith. Although the Deists in religion, Newton nonetheless criticized the scholasticism of the age as having failed to perceive the real world around us. Consequently, in his book, he insisted that observation rather than opinion could prove the truth.
Another scientist, Sir James Wright, the grandfather of microscopes, also contributed to the advance of the scientific method by developing the magnifying telescope. In his textbook, Physical System of the United States, published in 1800, he described the adjustment of the air-pressure and light intensity. He made use of a dial to adjust the two variables and thus made clear the relation between the two. The American king Eliza Cresswell, regarded by many to be the first female scientist, adopted some of Wright’s method when she studied the movement of various insects by means of a compound microscope. This led to the discovery of the first camera, which was used by Louis Pasteur to demonstrate that bacteria do not multiply through inhalation of their own saliva.
The French philosopher and psychologist, Mr. David Leopold, in his Reflections on Certain Problems, mentions many instances where the rise of scientific knowledge coincides with the advancement of moral standards. For example, when science discovers that cholera causes diarrhea, it does not seem to condemn the people who suffer from it. On the other hand, if Leopold calls for the boycott of cholera vaccines, because they don’t know for sure that they will help the victims, his tactics would be considered morally wrong.