HKB
why did Bacon conclude that his | New Logic Machine would produce | scientific knowledge in the form of | aphorisms and apothegms--not linear | time-sequence predictions? | | To summarize the above:: Most | contemporary interpreters of Bacon | evaluate his science by comparison with | Newtonian mechanics. If one interprets | Bacon on the basis of classical mechanics, | the result will not truly reflect Bacon's | science. | | A more fruitful modern model is the | Watson-Crick type of "science" illustrated | by their discovery of the double helix. Their | process, as described carefully in Watson's | book, could have been lifted from Bacon. It | was not. But the point is that it tells of a | highly successful, highly empiricist (in | Bacon's and Kant's meaning of | phenomenological empiricism) approach to | the "understanding" of the "unwritten | laws" of cell theory and genetics. | | NOTE: It is very instructive to study why | Linus Pauling failed to dsiscover the genetic | code. He was an expert in the physics of | biochemistry and applied quantum theory | to molecular biology. His theory of the | molecular bond won a Nobel Laureate. | | Read Watson's explanation of why Pauling | failed to crack the genetic code. | | Guenther Stent, the molecular biologist of | U.C. Berkeley is an avowed Kantian | who narrowly missed cracking the genetic | code, His philosophy of science is | highly relevant to the application of | neo-hermeneutics to contemporary biology. | | Today's philosophy of physics, as developed | by John Wheeler and David Bohm | describes a "Baconian" idea of the | "participant-observer universe" to account | "scientifically" and empirically for the | evidence produced in post-modern physics. | | I hold to two points that may not persuade | others. The first is the relevance of | "law-finding" to the phenemonological | empiricism at the heart of Bacon's Nov Org | logic machine--as contrasted with his early | experimentalism. The second is the | standard for us to use in evaluating Bacon's | science. Those who apply the model of | science widespread in the social sciences | and humanities during the 19th and mid | 20th centuries--essentially a model based | upon pre-Einsteinian physics--argue that | Bacon's science is not "science." | | In the last half of the 20th century | "science" in both the "hard" and "soft" | sciences underwent the so-called "second | scientific revolution." The results, in | physics and biology, produced a | phenomenology and an empiricism | that were both quite compatible with the | pre-Newtonian science of Bacon. | | About 80% of the actual research in | laboratories done today by scientists of | all fields, (unaware) follows remarkably | closely to the process explained by | Bacon in Novum Organum and described in | New Atlantis--except that taskforce | research is not today quite as well | organized as was described by Bacon in | New Atlantis.