HKB
lt is well known that this | rule of invention originates in | Ramus's methodology and, more | formerly, in Aristotle's POSTERIOR | ANALYTICS. To characterize the nature | of the premises required for the | foundation of true demonstrations, | Aristotle had set down three | criteria: the predicate must be true | in every instance of its subject; it | must be part of the essential nature | of the subject; and it must be | universal, that is, related to the | subject by itself and QUA itself. | Aristotle was defining first | propositions as being essential | propositions; and he referred | universality to necessity and | extension to comprehension These | three criteria were much commented | upon during the whole scholastic | period, and were transformed, or | rather extended, by Ramus and others | in the sixteenth century. Whereas in | Aristotle they had expressed the | initial conditions of any conclusive | syllogism, in Ramus they became the | conditions of every systematic art: | within a system, methodically | organized for the exhibiting of | knowledge, any statement must be | taken in its full extension, it must | join things which are necessarily | related and it must be equivalent to | a definition. But these rules for | syllogistic or dialectic art in | Aristotle or Ramus become rules for | inductive invention in Bacon: and | their meaning is quite different. | With the rule of certainty and | liberty, Bacon aims at directiy | opposing the old logic, infected by | syllogistic or rhetoric formalism. | | By its title, the NOVUM ORGANUM makes | Bacon's ambition clear: to replace | the Aristotelian organon, which has | governed all knowledge until the end | of the sixteenth century with an | entirely new logical instrument, a | new method for the progress and | profit of human science. And the | Chancellor proclaims that he has | achieved his aim, if posterity | acknowledges that, even if he has | failed to discover new truths or | produce new works, he will have built | the means to discover such truths or | to produce such works (III, 520). He | insists that his method has nothing | to do with the old one nor does it | try to improve it. And he puts out | the choice in these terms: | | There are and can be only two ways of | searching into and discovering truth. | The one flies from the senses and | particulars to the most general | axioms, and from these principles, | the truth of which it takes tor | settled and immoveable, proceeds to | judgment and to the discovery of | middle axioms. And this way is now in | fashion. The other derives axioms | from the senses and particulars, | rising by a gradual and unbroken | ascent, so that it arrives at the | most general axioms last of all. This | is the true way, but as yet untried.