HKB
And the critique of | formalism [formalism draws the | conclusions from the premises without | inquiring upon the truth of the | premises] must be attended by the | critique of the nature of the human | mind. | | The human mind is so disposed that it | relies on the senses, which provide | it with the rudiments of all | knowledge. Of course, Bacon argues, | we cannot get any information about | things except with the senses, and | skeptics are wrong when, questioning | them, they plunge the mind into | despair. "But by far the greatest | hindrance and aberration of the human | understanding proceeds from the | dulness, incompetency, and deceptions | of the senses" (IV, 58). On the one | hand, they are too dull and too | gross, and let the more subtle parts | of nature escape our observation: | their range is limited to the most | conspicuous information. On the other | hand, they are misleading, by a | fundamental illusion: they offer | things to the mind according to the | measure of human nature. "For it is a | false assertion that the sense of man | is the measure of things. On the | contrary, all perceptions as well of | the sense as of the mind are | according to the measure of the | individual and not according to the | measure of the universe" (IV, 54). In | order to have access to reality, we | have to rectify their information and | reduce a double delusion: the | illusion that the sensible qualities | offered by them are the real | determinations of things and the | illusion that things are divided | according to our human sensibility | (IV, 194 et sq.). | | Thus we can understand a third | critique against the old method: the | Aristotelian logic rests upon a | metaphysics which believes that | sensible experience gives the human | mind the things as they are, with | their essential qualities, and that | philosophy can be satisfied with | taking empirical phenomena for the | true reality of nature, thanks to a | mere generalization that erases the | particular circumstances of | existence. Nevertheless, empirically | qualified existences are not to be | mistaken for the things themselves. | So far, Bacon is undoubtedly a | modern, since he claims that the | object of knowledge is reality and | that reality, if it can be | inductively known from empirical | data, cannot be reduced to the matter | of experience. | | Bacon's fourth censure of the old | logic follows from this. He agrees | with the sixteenth-century | dialecticians that Aristotle was | wrong when he thought that | understanding could skip, without the | hard work of induction, from what is | immediately given to the senses to | what is posed in the first principles | of science. Aristotle wanted to know | the truth, but did not explain the | method of invention.