Baconian Science — In Our Time, Apr. 2, 2009
Among the most informative shows I can remember. What I found most interesting was that idea best summed up at the end by one of the guests that the Baconian ideology was much more important than the actual Baconian method. The method itself was somewhat challenging in practice, though as the inspiration for the modern scientific method it was still important. The other interesting parallel thought is that had Bacon succeeded in getting funding for an academy as envisioned in Solomon’s House, it may have been far less effective than the Royal Society became. Again, Bacon as figurehead within a generation of his death is more significant than Bacon as practitioner.
Guests:
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promis’d land,
And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and shew’d us it.
