Chapter II (4)

Division of Invention into the Invention of Arts and Arguments. The former, though the more important of them, is wanting. Division of the Invention of Arts into Literate (Instructed) Experience and a New Method (Novum Organum). An Illustration of Literate Experience.

INVENTION is of two very different kinds: the one of arts and sciences, the other of arguments and discourse. The former I set down as absolutely deficient. And this deficiency appears like that, when, in taking the inventory of an estate, there is set down, in cash, nothing: for as ready money will purchase all other commodities, so this art, if extant, would procure all other arts. And as the immense regions of the West Indies had never been discovered, if the use of the compass had not first been known, it is no wonder that the discovery and advancement of arts has made no greater progress, when the art of inventing and discovering the sciences remains hitherto unknown. That this part of knowledge is wanting, seems clear: for logic professes not, nor pretends to invent, either mechanical or liberal arts, nor to deduce the operations of the one, or the axioms of the other; but only leaves us this instruction in passage, to believe every artist in his own art. Celsus, a wise man, as well as a physician, speaking of the empirical and dogmatical sects of physicians, gravely and ingenuously acknowledges, that medicines and cures were first discovered, and the reasons and causes of them discoursed afterward, not that causes, first derived from the nature of things, gave light to the invention of cures and remedies. And Plato, more than once, observes, that particulars are infinite, that the highest generalities give no certain directions; and, therefore, that the marrow of all sciences, whereby the artist is distinguished from the unskilful workman, consists in middle propositions, which experience has delivered and taught in each particular science. Hence those who write upon the first inventors of things, and the origin of the sciences, rather celebrate chance than art, and bring in beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents, rather than men, as the first teachers of arts.

No wonder, therefore, as the manner of antiquity was to consecrate the inventors of useful things, that the Egyptians, an ancient nation, to which many arts owe their rise, had their temples filled with the images of brutes, and but a few human idols among them.

And if we should, according to the traditions of the Greeks, ascribe the first invention of arts to men, yet we cannot say that Prometheus studied the invention of fire; or that when he first struck the flint he expected sparks, but that he fell upon it by accident, and, as the poets say, stole it from Jupiter. So that as to the invention of arts, we are rather beholden to the wild goat for chirurgery, to the nightingale for music, to the stork for glysters, to the accidental flying off of a pot’s cover for artillery, and, in a word, to chance, or anything else, rather than to logic. Nor does the manner of invention, described by Virgil, differ much from the former; viz., that practice and intent thought by degrees struck out various arts.

For this is no other than what brutes are capable of, and frequently practice; viz., an intent solicitude about some one thing, and a perpetual exercise thereof, which the necessity of their preservation imposes upon them; for Cicero truly observed, that practice applied wholly to one thing, often conquers both nature and art—“Usus uni rei deditus, et naturam et artem sæpe vincit.” And therefore, if it may be said with regard to men, that continued labor and cogent necessity master everything,

so it may be asked with regard to brutes, who taught them instinct,

“Quis expedivit Psittaco suum Χαɩ̂ρε?”

Who taught the raven, in a drought, to drop pebbles into a hollow tree, where she chanced to spy water, that the water might rise for her to drink? Who taught the bee to sail through the yast ocean of air, to distant fields, and find the way back to her hive? Who taught the ant to gnaw every grain of corn that she hoards, to prevent its sprouting? And if we observe in Virgil the word extundere, which implies difficulty, and the word paulatim, which imports slowness, this brings us back to the case of the Egyptian gods; since men have hitherto made little use of their rational faculties, and none at all of art, in the investigation of things.

And this assertion, if carefully attended to, is proved from the form of logical induction, for finding and examining the principles of the sciences; which form being absolutely defective and insufficient, is so far from perfecting nature, that it perverts and distorts her. For whoever attentively observes how the ethereal dew of the sciences, like that of which the poet speaks,

“Aërii mellis cœlestia dona,”

is gathered (the sciences being extracted from particular examples, whether natural or artificial, as from so many flowers), will find that the mind of its own natural motion makes a better induction than that described by logicians. From a bare enumeration of particulars in the logical manner, where there is no contradictory instance, follows a false conclusion; nor does such an induction infer anything more than probable conjecture. For who will undertake, when the particulars of a man’s own knowledge or memory appear only on one side, that something directly opposite shall not lie concealed on the other? as if Samuel should have taken up with the sons of Jesse brought before him, and not have sought David, who was in the field. And to say the truth, as this form of induction is so gross and stupid, it might seem incredible that such acute and subtile geniuses as have been exercised this way, could ever have obtruded it upon the world, but that they hasted to theories and opinions, and, as it were, disdained to dwell upon particulars; for they have used examples and particular instances but as whifflers to keep the crowd off and make room for their own opinions, without consulting them from the beginning, so as to make a just and mature judgment of the truth of things. And this procedure has, indeed, struck me with an awful and religious wonder, to see men tread the same paths of error both in divine and human inquiries. For as in receiving divine truths men are averse to become as little children, so in the apprehending of human truths, for men to begin to read, and, like children, come back again to the first elements of induction, is reputed a low and contemptible thing.

But, allowing the principles of the sciences might be justly formed by the common induction, or by sense and experience, yet it is certain that the lower axioms cannot, in natural things, be with certainty deduced by syllogism from them. For syllogism reduces propositions to principles by intermediate propositions. And this form, whether of invention or proof, has place in the popular sciences, as ethics, politics, law, etc., and even in divinity, since God has been pleased to accommodate himself to the human capacity; but in physics, where nature is to be caught by works, and not the adversary by argument, truth in this way slips through our fingers, because the subtilty of the operations of nature far exceeds the subtilty of words. So that syllogism thus failing, there is everywhere a necessity for employing a genuine and correct induction, as well in the more general principles, as the inferior propositions. For syllogisms consist of propositions, propositions of words, but words are the signs of notions; wherefore if these notions, which are the souls of words, be unjustly and unsteadily abstracted from things, the whole structure must fall. Nor can any laborious subsequent examination of the consequences of arguments, or the truth of propositions, ever repair the ruin; for the error lies in the first digestion, which cannot be rectified by the secondary functions of nature.

It was not, therefore, without cause, that many of the ancient philosophers, and some of them eminent in their way, became academics and sceptics, who denied all certainty of human knowledge, and held that the understanding went no further than appearance and probability. It is true, some are of opinion that Socrates, when he declared himself certain of nothing, did it only in the way of irony, and put on the dissimulation of knowledge, that, by renouncing what he certainly knew, he might be thought to know what he was ignorant of. Nor in the latter academy, which Cicero followed, was this opinion held with much reality; but those who excelled in eloquence, commonly chose this sect as the fittest for their purpose, viz., acquiring the reputation of disputing copiously on both sides of the question, thus leaving the high road of truth for private walks of pleasure. Yet it is certain there were some few, both in the old and new academies, but more among the sceptics, who held this principle of doubting in simplicity and sincerity of heart. But their chief error lay in accusing the perceptions of the senses, and thus plucked up the sciences by their roots. For though the senses often deceive or fail us, yet, when industriously assisted, they may suffice for the sciences, and this not so much by the help of instruments, which also have their use, as of such experiments as may furnish more subtile objects than are perceivable by sense. But they should rather have charged the defects of this kind upon the errors and obstinacy of the mind, which refuses to obey the nature of things; and again, upon corrupt demonstrations, and wrong ways of arguing and concluding, erroneously inferred from the perceptions of sense. And this we say, not to detract from the human mind, or as if the work were to be deserted, but that proper assistances may be procured and administered to the understanding, whereby to conquer the difficulties of things and the obscurities of nature. What we endeavor is, that the mind, by the help of art, may become equal to things, and to find a certain art of indication or direction, to disclose and bring other arts to light, together with their axioms and effects. And this art we, upon just ground, report as deficient.

This art of indication has two parts; for indication proceeds, 1, from experiment to experiment; or 2, from experiments to axioms, which may again point out new experiments. The former we call learned experience, and the latter the interpretation of nature, Novum Organum, or new machine for the mind. The first, indeed, as was formerly intimated, is not properly an art, or any part of philosophy, but a kind of sagacity; whence we sometimes call it the chase of Pan, borrowing the name from the fable of that god. And as there are three ways of walking, viz., either by feeling out one’s way in the dark; or 2, when being dim-sighted, another leads one by the hand; and 3, by directing one’s steps by a light: so when a man tries all kinds of experiments without method or order, this is mere groping in the dark; but when he proceeds with some direction and order in his experiments, it is as if he were led by the hand; and this we understand by learned experience: but for the light itself, which is the third way, it must be derived from the Novum Organum.

The design of learned experience, or the chase of Pan, is to show the various ways of making experiments; and as we note it for deficient, and the thing itself is none of the clearest, we will here give some short sketch of the work. The manner of experimenting chiefly consists in the variation, production, translation, inversion, compulsion, application, conjunction, or any other manner of diversifying, or making chance experiments. And all this lies without the limits of any axiom of invention; but the interpretation of nature takes in all the transitions of experiments into axioms, and of axioms into experiments.

Experiments are varied first in the subject, as when a known experiment, having rested in one certain substance, is tried in another of the like kind; thus the making of paper is hitherto confined to linen, and not applied to silk, unless among the Chinese, nor to hair-stuffs and camblets, nor to cotton and skins; though these three seem to be more unfit for the purpose, and so should be tried in mixture rather than separate. Again, engrafting is practiced in fruit trees, but rarely in wild ones; yet an elm grafted upon an elm is said to produce great foliage for shade. Incision likewise in flowers is very rare, though now the experiment begins to be made upon musk-roses, which are successfully inoculated upon common ones. We also place the variations on the side of the thing among the variations in the matter. Thus we see a scion grafted upon the trunk of a tree thrives better than if set in earth; and why should not onion-seed set in a green onion grow better than when sown in the ground by itself, a root being here substituted for the trunk, so as to make a kind of incision in the root?

An experiment may be varied in the efficient. Thus, as the sun’s rays are so contracted by a burning glass, and heightened to such a degree as to fire any combustible matter, may not the rays of the moon, by the same means, be actuated to some small degree of warmth, so as to show whether all the heavenly bodies are potentially hot? and as luminous heats are thus increased by glasses, may not opaque heats, as of stones and metals, before ignition, be increased likewise, or is there not some proportion of light here also? Amber and jet, chafed, attract straws, whence query, if they will not do the same when warmed at the fire?

An experiment may be varied in quantity, wherein very great care is required, as being subject to various errors. For men imagine, that upon increasing the quantity the virtue should increase proportionably; and this they commonly postulate as a mathematical certainty, and yet it is utterly false. Suppose a leaden ball of a pound weight, let fall from a steeple, reaches the earth in ten seconds, will a ball of two pounds, where the power of natural motion, as they call it, should be double, reach it in five? No, they will fall almost in equal times, and not be accelerated according to quantity. Suppose a drachm of sulphur would liquefy half a pound of steel, will, therefore, an ounce of sulphur liquefy four pounds of steel? It does not follow; for the stubbornness of the matter in the patient is more increased by quantity than the activity of the agent. Besides, too much as well as too little may frustrate the effect—thus, in smelting and refining of metals it is a common error to increase the heat of the furnace or the quantity of the flux; but if these exceed a due proportion, they prejudice the operation, because by their force and corrosiveness they turn much of the pure metal into fumes, and carry it off, whence there ensues not only a loss in the metal, but the remaining mass becomes more sluggish and intractable. Men should therefore remember how Æsop’s housewife was deceived, who expected that by doubling her feed her hen should lay two eggs a day; but the hen grew fat, and laid none. It is absolutely unsafe to rely upon any natural experiment before proof be made of it, both in a less and a larger quantity.

An experiment is produced two ways; viz., by repetition and extension, the experiment being either repeated or urged to a more subtile thing. It may serve for an example of repetition, that spirit of wine is made of wine by one distillation, and thus becomes much stronger and more acrid than the wine itself—will likewise spirit of wine proportionally exceed itself in strength by another distillation? But the repetition also of experiments may deceive; thus here the second exaltation does not equal the excess of the first; and frequently, by repeating an experiment after a certain pitch is obtained, nature is so far from going further, that she rather falls back. Judgment, therefore, must be used in this affair. So quicksilver put into melted lead, when it begins to grow cold, will be arrested, and remain no longer fluid; but will the same quicksilver, often served so, become fixed and malleable?

For an example of extension, water made pendulous above, by means of a long glass stem, and dipped into a mixture of wine and water, will separate the water from the wine, the wine gently rising to the top, and the water descending and settling at the bottom. Now, as wine and water, being two different bodies, are separable by this contrivance, may likewise the more subtile parts of wine, which is an entire body, be separated from the more gross by this kind of distillation, performed as it were by gravity, so as to have floating atop a liquor like spirit of wine, or perhaps more subtile? Again, the loadstone draws iron in substance, but will loadstone plunged into a solution of iron attract the iron and cover itself with it? So the magnetic needle applies to the poles of the world; but does it do this after the same course and order that the celestial bodies move? Suppose the needle held at the south point, and then let go, would it now turn to the north by the west or east? Thus gold imbibes quicksilver contiguous to it; but does the gold do this without increasing its own bulk, so as to become a mass specifically heavier than gold? Thus men help their memories by setting up pictures of persons in certain places; but would they obtain the same end if, neglecting their faces, they only imagined the actions or habits of the persons?

An experiment may be transferred three ways; viz., by nature or chance into an art; 2, from one art or practice to another; and, 3, from one part of an art to another. There are innumerable examples of the transferring of experiments from nature or chance to arts, as nearly all the mechanical arts owe their origins to slender beginnings afforded by nature or accident. It is authorized by a proverb, that grapes among grapes ripen sooner. And our cider-makers observe the rule; for they do not stamp and press their apples without laying them on heaps for a time, to ripen by mutual contact, whereby the liquor is prevented from being too tart. So the making of artificial rainbows by the thick sprinkling of little drops of water, is an easy translation from natural rainbows made in a rainy cloud. So the art of distillation might be taken either from the falling of rain and dew, or that homely experiment of boiling water, where drops adhere to the cover of the vessel. Mankind might have been afraid to imitate thunder and lightning by the invention of great guns, had not the chemical monk received the first hint of it by the impetuous discharge and loud report of the cover of his vessel. But if mankind were desirous to search after useful things, they ought attentively, minutely, and on set purpose, to view the workmanship and particular operations of nature, and be continually examining and casting about which of them may be transferred to arts; for nature is the mirror of art.

Nor are there fewer experiments transferable from one art or practice to another, though this be rarely used. For nature lies everywhere obvious to us all, though particular arts are only known to particular artists. Spectacles were invented for weak sights—might not, therefore, an instrument be discovered that, applied to the ears, should help the hearing? Embalming preserves dead bodies—could not, therefore, something of like kind be transferred to medicine, for the preservation of live ones? So the practice of sealing in wax, cements, and lead, is ancient, and paved the way to the printing on paper, or the art of the press. So in cookery, salt preserves meats better in winter than in summer—might not this be usefully transferred to baths, and the occasional regulation of their temperature? So by late experience salt is found of great efficacy in condensing, by the way of artificial freezing—might not this be transferred to the condensing of metals, since it is found that the aquæ-fortes, composed of salts, dissolve particles of gold out of some lighter metals? So painting refreshes the memory by the image of a thing; and is not this transferred in what they call the art of memory? And let it be observed, in general, that nothing is of greater efficacy in procuring a stock of new and useful inventions, than to have the experiments of numerous mechanic arts known to a single person, or to a few, who might mutually improve each other by conversation; so that by this translation of experiments arts might mutually warm and light up each other, as it were, by an intermixture of rays. For although the rational way, by means of a new machine for the mind, promises much greater things; yet this sagacity, or learned experience, will in the meantime scatter among mankind many matters, which, as so many missive donatives among the ancients, are near at hand.

The transferring of experiments from one part of an art to another differs little from the transferring one art to another. But because some arts are so extensive as to allow of the translation of experiments within themselves, it is proper to mention this kind also, especially as it is of very great moment in some particular arts. Thus it greatly contributes to enlarge the art of medicine to have the experiments of that part which treats of the cures of diseases, transferred to those parts which relate to the preservation of health and the prolongation of life. For if any famous opiate should, in a pestilential distemper, suppress the violent inflammation of the spirits, it might thence seem probable that something of the same kind, rendered familiar by a due dose, might in good measure check that wasting inflammation which steals on with age.

An experiment is inverted when the contrary of what the experiment shows is proved; for example, heat is increased by burning glasses; but may cold be so too? So heat in diffusing itself rather mounts upward, but cold in diffusing itself rather moves downward. Thus, if an iron rod be heated at one end, then erected upon its heated end, and the hand be applied to the upper part of the rod, the hand will presently be burned; but if the heated end be placed upward and the hand applied below, it will be burned much slower. But if the whole rod were heated, and one end of it wet with snow or a sponge dipped in cold water, would the cold be sooner propagated downward than upward if the sponge were applied below? Again, the rays of the sun are reflected from a white body, but absorbed by a black one. Are shadows also scattered by black and collected by white bodies? We see in a dark place, where light comes in only at a small hole, the images of external objects are received upon white paper, but not upon black.

An experiment is compelled where it is urged or produced to the annihilation or destruction of the power, the prey being only caught in the other chases, but killed in this. Thus the loadstone attracts iron—urge, therefore, the iron, or urge the loadstone, till they attract no longer; for example, if the loadstone were burned, or steeped in aquafortis, would it entirely, or only in part, lose its virtue? So if iron were reduced to a crocus, or made into prepared steel, as they call it, or dissolved in aqua-fortis, would the loadstone still attract it? The magnet draws iron through all known mediums—gold, silver, glass, etc. Urge the medium, therefore, and, if possible, find out one that intercepts the virtue. Thus make trial of quicksilver, oil, gums, ignited gold, and such things as have not yet been tried. Again, microscopes have been lately introduced which strangely magnify minute objects; urge the use of them, either by applying them to objects so small that their power is lost, or so large till it is confounded. Thus, for example, can microscopes clearly discover those things in urine which are not otherwise perceptible? Can they discover any specks or clouds in gems that are perfectly clear and bright to appearance? Can they magnify the motes of the sun, which Democritus mistook for atoms and the principles of things? Will they show a mixed powder of vermilion and ceruse in distinct grains of red and white? Will they magnify larger objects—as the face, the eye, etc.—as much as they do a gnat or a mite, or represent a piece of fine linen open as a net? But we need not insist longer on compulsory experiments, as they do not justly come within the limits of literate experience, but are rather referred to axioms, causes, and the New Organum.

The application of an experiment is no more than an ingenious translation of it to some other experiment of use; for example, all bodies have their own dimensions and gravities. Gold has more gravity and less bulk than silver, and water than wine—hence a useful experiment is derived for discovering what proportion of silver is mixed with gold, or of water with wine, from a knowledge of their measure and weight, which was the grand discovery of Archimedes. Again, as flesh putrefies sooner in some cellars than in others, it were useful to transfer this experiment to the examination of airs, as to their being more or less wholesome to live in, by finding those wherein flesh remains longest unputrefied; and the same experiment is applicable to discover the more wholesome or pestilential seasons of the year. But examples of this kind are endless, and require that men should have their eyes continually turned one while to the nature of things and another while to human uses.

The conjunction of an experiment is a connection and chain of applications, when those things which were not useful single, are made useful by connection; for example, to have roses or fruits come late, the way is to pluck off the early buds, or to lay bare the roots and expose them to the open air, toward the middle of spring; but it is much better to do both together. So ice and nitre separate have a great power of cooling, but a much greater when mixed together. But there may be a fallacy in this obvious affair, as in all cases where axioms are wanting, if the conjunction be made in things that operate by different and, as it were, contrary ways.

As for chance experiments, these are plainly an irrational and wild procedure, when the mind suggests the trial of a thing, not because any reason or experiment persuades it, but only because nothing of the kind has been tried before; yet even here, perhaps, some considerable mystery lies concealed, provided no stone in nature were left unturned; for the capital things of nature generally lie out of the beaten paths, so that even the absurdness of a thing sometimes proves useful. But if reason also be here joined, so as to show that the like experiment never was attempted, and yet that there is great cause why it should be; then this becomes an excellent instrument, and really enters the bosom of nature. For example, in the operation of fire upon natural bodies it has hitherto always happened that either something flies off, as flame and smoke in our common fires, or at least that the parts are locally separated to some distance, as in distillation, where the vapor rises and the fæces are left behind; but no man has hitherto tried close distillation. Yet it seems probable, that if the force of heat may have its action confined in the cavities of a body, without any possibility of loss or escape, this Proteus of matter will be manacled, as it were, and forced to undergo numerous transformations, provided only the heat be so moderated and changed as not to break the containing vessel. For this is a kind of natural matrix, where heat has its effect without separating or throwing off the parts of a body. In a true matrix, indeed, there is nourishment supplied; but in point of transmutation the case is the same. And here let none despair or be confounded, if the experiments they attempt should not answer their expectation; for though success be indeed more pleasing, yet failure, frequently, is no less informing; and it must ever be remembered, that experiments of light are more to be desired than experiments of profit. And so much for learned experience, as we call it, which thus appears to be rather a sagacity, or a scenting of nature, as in hunting, than a direct science.

As regards the Novum Organum, we shall state here nothing either summarily or in detail, it being our intention, with the Divine assistance, to devote an entire treatise to that subject, which is more important than all the rest.