Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
Novum Organum
A new instrument of thought: induction instead of syllogism.
Introduction
Bacon published the Latin work in 1620 as the second part of his “Great Instauration”, a renewal of the sciences planned in six parts, most of which he never wrote. It consists of two books of aphorisms. Book I diagnoses obstacles to knowledge, above all the four “idols” of the mind: of the tribe, the cave, the marketplace and the theatre. Book II presents the new method: tables of presence, absence and degrees, through which a phenomenon such as heat is to be analysed, here as a kind of motion. The title page shows a ship sailing past the Pillars of Hercules, the traditional limit of the known world.
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Connections
Criticizes
- Organonc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
Taken up in
- A System of Logic1843 · John Stuart Mill
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