Bacon And Aristotle

1 Pages 358 Words

Bacon and Aristotle
Throughout Bacon’s Novum Organum, Bacon criticizes Aristotle’s views on science to a point where he is almost belittling him. He criticized Aristotle’s philosophy from the foundations upwards. He thought that Aristotle was biased and argued that Aristotle’s views were corrupted and caused damage to the natural philosophy.
He mainly disagreed with Aristotle’s philosophy because its foundation starts with something already known and then goes through series of steps to reach a general statement. Likewise, Bacon argues that his method starts with concrete things, rather than with previous ideas, which is not always clear. Therefore, according to him, Aristotle cannot possibly reach the truth.
I conclude therefore that the signs of truth and soundness in the philosophies and sciences that are current are not at all good, whether taken from the origins of those ideas, or from their fruits or their growth, or the admissions of their founders, or the fact of their common acceptance. (Bacon 87)
Aristotle was biased because he used the natural philosophy against his logic, and made it a disputation in itself and therefore making it useless (Bacon 62). He was so caught up in his own idea that it only led him to untruth and then led many people to believe him and destroy science and nature all together. Also the syllogism of Aristotle’s does not allow people to advance into a greater domain simply because the answer was already contained in the premises.
Logic that was used by Aristotle damaged the natural philosophy that Bacon is trying to stress “… which ought to mark out the boundaries of natural philosophy, not generate or give it birth” (Bacon 106). So therefore Bacon considers only greater outcomes would come from the natural philosophy if it were pure and unadulterated (Bacon 106).
In Conclusion, Bacon views Aristotle as a complete destroyer of nature and the sciences. He argues that A...