Baconian method

Bacon's method begins with description of the requirements for making the careful, systematic observations necessary to produce quality facts.

The whole process is repeated in a stepwise fashion to build an increasingly complex base of knowledge, but one which is always supported by observed facts, or more generally speaking, empirical data.

He contended, like other researchers at the time, that by doing this careful work man could begin to understand God's wonderful creation, to reclaim the knowledge that had been lost in Adam and Eve's "fall", and to make the most of his God-given talents.

[2] Steven Matthews is cautious about the interaction with a single confession, as the English Reformation allowed a higher doctrinal diversity compared to the continent.

Bacon described numerous classes of Instances with Special Powers, cases in which the phenomenon one is attempting to explain is particularly relevant.

Aside from the First Vintage and the Instances with Special Powers, Bacon enumerates additional "aids to the intellect" which presumably are the next steps in his method.

[7] In concrete terms, the cabinet of curiosities, exemplifying the Plinian approach, was to be upgraded from a source of wonderment to a challenge to science.

[8] The main source in Bacon's works for the approach was his Sylva Sylvarum, and it suggested a more systematic collection of data in the search for causal explanations.

[10] As a general intellectual programme, Bacon's ideas on "natural history" have been seen as a broad influence on British writers later in the 17th century, in particular in economic thought and within the Royal Society.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno observe that Bacon shuns "knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction" in favor of effective procedures.

[12] While the Baconian method disparages idols of the mind, its requirement for effective procedures compels it to adopt a credulous, submissive stance toward worldly power.

[irrelevant citation] Horkheimer and Adorno offer a plea to recover the virtues of the "metaphysical apologia", which is able to reveal the injustice of effective procedures rather than merely employing them.