Case Study of a Philosophical Argument of Francis Bacon - Assignment Example

?Case Study of a Philosophical Argument The Life of Sir Francis Bacon Sir Francis Bacon was a 16th and 17th century English philosopher who was a proponent of empiricism and the scientific method during the scientific revolution. He focused on the standardization of science, trying to establish suitable methods of scientific inquiry to ensure that empirical values could be gained from experimentation. Bacon wanted to investigate the natural world in a logical and standard method. Interestingly, one of his inquiries ultimately led to his death; he was investigating the effect of freezing on meat and eventually contracted pneumonia. This, and his lasting effect on scientific methodologies, has led to him being considered a particularly influential figure in the field. Bacon may have himself started the scientific revolution, something which is ongoing today. Bacon started life as part of a English noble family, and was educated at Cambridge University. It was these studies, conducted in Latin, that first introduced him to the world of philosophy. He was particularly enthralled by the works of Aristotle, although he did not agree with the Ancient Greek's philosophy itself. He concluded that the current methods of scientific inquiry would not lead to suitable reliable results, because they did not focus on inductive reasoning but instead on deductive syllogisms. This method could and would lead only to erroneous results, completely abandoning the point of conducting such inquiry. He concluded that a philosopher scientist must be completely impartial and objective to ensure that the results were not biased by personal influences and subjective thinking. Bacon believed that there were four different 'idols' that could lead a scientist to getting false results; idols of the tribe, idols of the den, idols of the marketplace and idols of the theater. When a scientist has freed his mind from these idols, a logical inquiry can take place that will lead to consistent and true results based on nature rather than supposition. Bacon's Philosophy of Science The essential framework of Bacon's theory can be summed up by saying that he insisted that a good scientist should not be an ant and mindlessly gather data but nor should he be a spider and spin empty theories. Any good scientist will lie somewhere between the two, and gather data and formulate theories and scientific truths from these observations of nature. This thought of Bacon's has been credited with perhaps setting the ball rolling on the huge amount of scientific advances made in the 17th century, simply because the old methods did not rely on observation and thought. Bacon believed, as scientists do today, that science is something that should follow certain outlines and procedures. Experimentation is key because it leads people to the truth, rather than something that simply propels their own personal ideas and desires. Truth is ultimately what we aim for in science today, and it seems odd that this would be a novel idea in the 17th century, but Bacon's philosophy was one of the first to suggest objective empiricism as a method in science. Perspectives on Bacon's Philosophy of Science However, although this might sound obvious to the modern reader, there are some philosophical arguments that have been used for and against the ideas of Bacon. For example, the scientific method relies on observations, but there is also the point that the senses themselves are unreliable and can lead to bias, whether we free our minds from idols or not. It is difficult to know whether our observations on nature and science are true because of how they work; optical illusions are a good example of an argument against scientific inquiry in this way. However, it has to be suggested that there are no other ways of observing any scientific inquiry apart from to use the senses, because they are all we have. All tests rely on measurements, images or results that have to be viewed to be noted down and to form theories from them. There is very little else a scientist can do when it comes to results and scientific note-taking. Another element of Bacon's philosophy is his stress to not overlook the mundane. This is interesting in a modern sense because scientists nowadays are often exploring and experimenting on the mundane to give some sort of explanation for the world around us. These mundane explorations have given us some of the most important scientific advances in the scientific age; medicine has been found from concentrating on plants, for example. Bacon stresses that to truly understand the nature of the world, a scientist must strive to observe and theorize about everything he can. This is sometimes seen as a precursor to the theories of Latour, who also stressed the necessity of this type of observation. Both philosophers suggest that the mind is useless on its own but has a great power when harnessed. Something else about Bacon's philosophy which is often contended is his use and description of the idols. Some feel that whilst it is possible to professionally extract these types of bias from the mind, it is not possible to completely eliminate them from one's personality. The tribe especially is part of who we are and cannot be ignored, even in the pursuit of true knowledge. Bacon does not explicitly say that we must overcome all aspects of our personality and humanity before embarking on scientific inquiry, but that we must try to be as objective as possible. This seems to be a fair point, but many scholars suggest that perhaps in acknowledging this flawed aspect of the mind Bacon has undermined his entire philosophy, which itself relies on observations made by the same flawed mind. It has been said that Bacon here is not talking about sense-data in that he is not suggesting that all the data we use in the scientific method should come from outside the body. It could be said that Bacon is suggesting that we rebuild the entire sensory system to mirror the way that nature works in order to gain true scientific knowledge from the world. One article suggests that Bacon requires a complete reshaping of human nature and the human sensory systems before we can pursue this style of inquiry and reasoning. In some ways, it could be said that we have, because Bacon predicted a huge increase in the amount of scientific knowledge and this has provided a logical framework on which to base other scientific inquiries. Modern science is perhaps being built on centuries of reshaping the human mind to mirror nature and allow the senses to provide us with true information about the outside world. It could be argued that we can never be sure that our senses are not providing us with false information because all humans seem to be provided with the same false information, but perhaps this is an unnecessary point because we are trying to gather scientific knowledge about the world around us. Bacon would probably disagree with this, but again it is an aspect of scientific philosophy that cannot be overlooked. Contemporary Views on Science and Bacon This essay has thus far touched briefly on the consequences of Bacon's scientific method on modern science, but it is important to cover this briefly in more detail. It has been mentioned that Bacon's philosophy of science is one of the founding elements of how scientific inquiry is today, and therefore it is consistent with the modern way of scientific experimentation and how modern science works. It is also interesting that this type of inquiry was not necessarily the norm before Bacon, which is why he is considered such a pioneer, but modern science relies on this observation and theorizing objective empiricism. There seems to be no other way of exploring science, to the modern mind, than to experiment and observe and use these to form some explanation of how the world around us works. This has given us many of the most important advances in the modern age. All pharmaceuticals are tested based on observations of how they interact with the human body, for example. These careful observations, using the scientific method, lead many people to live a longer and healthier life than before. In this sense we can say that Bacon is one of the most important figures in modern medicine, as well as science generally. There are, however, inconsistencies, which have been outlined above. The idols that Bacon mentions must be eradicated in the pursuit of scientific knowledge are not commonplace in science society today. It is generally accepted that one must free one's mind of unnecessary bias, but the actual idols (and the term idol itself) are no longer part of common scientific parlance. There are also specific nuances of Bacon's moral code that do not appear in modern science, which Bacon generally relied upon to form his philosophy of science. There is also less pressure from authorities such as the church who may be unhappy with some of the pursuits of scientific inquiry, which means that some modern science is not explored in the same way that Bacon would have predicted. Having said all this, Bacon is undeniably one of the most important figures of modern science and must be given due credit for changing the philosophy of science forever. Read More