Bacon’s Metaphysical Method

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Garber ◽  

In this paper, I would like to examine the method that Bacon proposes in Novum organum II.1-20 and illustrates with the example of the procedure for discovering the form of heat. One might think of a scientific method as a general schema for research into nature, one that can, in principle, be used independently of the particular conception of the natural world which one adopts, and independently of the particular scientific domain with which one is concerned. Indeed, Bacon himself suggested that as with logic, his method, or as he calls it there his “system of interpreting” is widely applicable to any domain, and not just to natural philosophy. [Novum organum I.127] Now, recent studies of Bacon have emphasized his own natural philosophical commitments, and the underlying conception of nature that runs through his writings. In my essay I argue that the method Bacon illustrates in Novum organum II is deeply connected to this underlying view of nature: far from being a neutral procedure for decoding nature, Bacon’s method is a tool for filling out the details of a natural philosophy built along the broad outlines of the Baconian world view.

Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abir Igamberdiev

Relational ideas for our description of the natural world can be traced to the concept of Anaxagoras on the multiplicity of basic particles, later called “homoiomeroi” by Aristotle, that constitute the Universe and have the same nature as the whole world. Leibniz viewed the Universe as an infinite set of embodied logical essences called monads, which possess inner view, compute their own programs and perform mathematical transformations of their qualities, independently of all other monads. In this paradigm, space appears as a relational order of co-existences and time as a relational order of sequences. The relational paradigm was recognized in physics as a dependence of the spatiotemporal structure and its actualization on the observer. In the foundations of mathematics, the basic logical principles are united with the basic geometrical principles that are generic to the unfolding of internal logic. These principles appear as universal topological structures (“geometric atoms”) shaping the world. The decision-making system performs internal quantum reduction which is described by external observers via the probability function. In biology, individual systems operate as separate relational domains. The wave function superposition is restricted within a single domain and does not expand outside it, which corresponds to the statement of Leibniz that “monads have no windows”.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Vilija Celiešienė ◽  
Saulutė Juzelėnienė

Abstract Metaphorical nomination is peculiar in every language, it is related to reality and world view perception, it also reveals the traits of nation mentality. However, there are universal models of metaphorical nomination. In both languages, special concepts can be nominated according to similar areas, e.g. human body, its physiological and mental peculiarities, mode of life, fauna, flora, objects of natural world, etc. The aim of this article is to analyse tendencies of metaphorical nominations in IT terminology in English and Lithuanian languages, reveal universalities and peculiarities of metaphorical nomination models. Research data of Lithuanian metaphorical terms and their English equivalents show that semantic loan-words constitute the major part of Lithuanian metaphorical terms. Consequently, their metaphorical meanings are borrowed but a substantial part of them are fairly motivated in the Lithuanian language and only a small part of them have a doubtful motivation. Having analysed various ways of metaphorical transference it is possible to claim that figurative nomination of concepts is the most universal with reference to flora names and items of mode of life. It is noted that there is a tendency to nominate concepts meaning particular objects in both English and Lithuanian languages whereas analogies of abstract things are less abundant.


1977 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 675-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Dittmer

The extent to which the Cultural Revolution has transformed the world-view of the Chinese masses remains among the psycho-cultural imponderables, but clearly it has revolutionized the western view of Chinese politics. The dominant pre-1966 image of a consensual solidarity disturbed only rarely by purges, also handled in an orderly way by a consensus excluding only its victims, was challenged by a sudden multitude of polemical claims to the effect that a struggle for power and principle had been raging behind the scenes for decades. This struggle was characterized as a “struggle between two lines”: a “proletarian revolutionary line,” led by Mao Tse-tung, and a “bourgeois reactionary line,” led by Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiaop'ing. This struggle allegedly represented a deep underlying ideological cleavage within the leadership that had repercussions on every aspect of Chinese life: foreign policy, strategies of economic development, techniques of leadership and administration, pay scales and living standards, delivery patterns for education, medicine, and other services; even scientific method. Allegations concerning this struggle were supported by a wealth of documentary evidence, culled from hitherto confidential Party and government files. Initially greeted with scepticism among western journalists and academic circles, some variant of the “two lines” paradigm has made increasing inroads into our attempts to understand the origins of the Cultural Revolution. The time has come to re-evaluate the conception of a two-line struggle in retrospect and to try to determine just what it means and how it functions.


Author(s):  
Daniel Juan Gil

In the seventeenth century, the hope for resurrection starts to be undermined by an emerging empirical scientific world view and a rising Cartesian dualist ontology that translates resurrection into more dualist terms. But poets pick up the embattled idea of resurrection of the body and bend it from a future apocalypse into the here and now so that they imagine the body as it exists now to be already infused with the strange, vibrant materiality of the “resurrection body.” This “resurrection body” is imagined as the precondition for the social identities and forms of agency of the social person, and yet the “resurrection body” also remains deeply other to all such identities and forms of agency, an alien within the self that both enables and undercuts life as a social person. Positing a “resurrection body” within the historical person leads seventeenth-century poets to use their poetry to develop an awareness of the unsettling materiality within the heart of the self and allows them to reimagine agency, selfhood, and the natural world in this light. In developing a poetics that seeks a deranging materialism within the self, these poets anticipate twentieth-century “avant-garde” poetics. They do not frame their poems as simple representation nor as beautiful objects but as a form of social praxis that creates new communities of readers and writers that are assembled by a new experience of self-as-body mediated by poetry.


Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arran Gare

Prior to the nineteenth century, those who are now regarded as scientists were referred to as natural philosophers. With empiricism, science was claimed to be a superior form of knowledge to philosophy, and natural philosophy was marginalized. This claim for science was challenged by defenders of natural philosophy, and this debate has continued up to the present. The vast majority of mainstream scientists are comfortable in the belief that through applying the scientific method, knowledge will continue to accumulate, and that claims to knowledge outside science apart from practical affairs should not be taken seriously. This is referred to as scientism. It is incumbent on those who defend natural philosophy against scientism not only to expose the illusions and incoherence of scientism, but to show that natural philosophers can make justifiable claims to advancing knowledge. By focusing on a recent characterization and defense of natural philosophy along with a reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy, showing the nature and role of Schelling’s conception of dialectical thinking, I will attempt to identify natural philosophy as a coherent tradition of thought and defend it as something different from science and as essential to it, and essential to the broader culture and to civilization.


Philosophy ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 21 (78) ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Whitrow

The history of Natural Philosophy is dominated by a paradox; broadly speaking, a vast increase in its range of application to the external world has been accompanied by a sweeping simplification in its basic assumptions. From the standpoint of Empiricism this dual development appears utterly mysterious. On the other hand, Rationalism, which seeks to demonstrate the metaphysical necessity of natural law, and hence might throw light on this development, has been generally discredited, particularly by men of science. It is not surprising, therefore, that philosophical discussion of scientific method has become a Babel of confusing tongues.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. C. Lefroy

Two fundamental changes in attitude are required before efforts to develop sustainable agricultural systems will be successful. Firstly, the deeply held and often unexamined views we have of our relationship with the natural world, particularly the view of nature as a commodity, must be challenged. Secondly, we must question our continuing faith in a knowledge-based world view as the best way to solve problems that are a consequence of that view. The history of agricultural settlement in Western Australia is an example of the view of nature as a commodity that led to failed agricultural schemes at great social and environmental costs.


Author(s):  
Kamran Hameed ◽  
Naveed Yazdani ◽  
Rana Zamin Abbas

Firstly, this paper describes a phenomenon of transnational organization and general condition of world and ‘man in the world’. For developing a comprehensive framework, it presents authentic literature review beginning from modernity to post modernity using the hermeneutic-interpretivism research tradition to show the similarities between modernism and post modernism. By revealing the missing link in the quantum paradigm of ralph Kilmann (scholar of quantum organization) on one hand, it develops the possibility of reviving revealed knowledge back into the main frame knowledge of organization theory, on the other hand. By raising and addressing the question of how can the revealed knowledge addresses the current economic dilemma, the paper describes the three lenses available used to understand natural world, socio economic world and behavioral world in Newtonian verses quantum assumptions on organization theory   along with their implications. For cross fertilization of ideas and better understanding of God, cosmos and human it presents an alternative of Islamic way forward suggested by scholarly views from East and West. To further substantiate, it presents the stunning insights from the renowned wisdom traditions (pragmatic civilizations) to highlight why religions matter to show (the levels of reality and levels of selfhood as well as relationship between Necessity being and contingent being), responding the situation of power and domination prevalent in organizing world by suggesting historical/civilizational ethical mode and adopting psycho, spiritual-pragmatic approach with holistic world view (Big picture).


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