Augustus De Morgan

“ The two senses of the word law come in so as to look almost like a play upon words. The judge can apply the law so soon as the facts are settled: the physical philosopher has to deduce the law from the facts. Wait, says the judge, until the facts are determined: did the prisoner take the goods with felonious intent? did the defendant give what amounts to a warranty? or the like. Wait, says Bacon, until all the facts, or all the obtainable facts, are brought in: apply my rules of separation to the facts, and the result shall come out as easily as by ruler and compasses. ”

“ Therefore why do we still hesitate to concede to it motion which is by nature consistent with its form, the more so because the whole universe is moving, whose end is not and cannot be known, and not confess that there is in the sky an appearance of daily revolution, while on the earth there is the truth of it? ”

“ He said of Bacon, "He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." This has been generally supposed to be only a sneer at the sutor ultra crepidam; but we cannot help suspecting that there was more intended by it. To us, Bacon is eminently the philosopher of error prevented, not of progress facilitated. When we throw off the idea of being led right, and betake ourselves to that of being kept from going wrong, we read his writings with a sense of their usefulness, his genius, and their probable effect upon purely experimental science, which we can be conscious of upon no other supposition. ”

“ A somewhat fanciful thinker, one Kepler, had hit upon the approximate orbits of the planets by trying one hypothesis after another: he found the ellipse, which the Platonists, well despised of Bacon, and who would have despised him as heartily if they had known him, had investigated and put ready to hand nearly 2000 years before. [134] The sun in the focus, the motions of the planet more and more rapid as they approach the sun, led Kepler—and Bacon would have reproved him for his rashness—to imagine that a force residing in the sun might move the planets, a force inversely as the distance. ”

“ Let us take the well-known first aphorism of the Novum Organum:
"Man being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything."
This aphorism is placed by Sir John Herschel [119] at the head of his Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy: a book containing notions of discovery far beyond any of which Bacon ever dreamed; and this because it was written after discovery, instead of before. ”

“ Admission to its sanctuary, and to the privileges and feelings of a votary, is only to be gained by one means—sound and sufficient knowledge of mathematics, the great instrument of all exact inquiry, without which no man can ever make such advances in this or any other of the higher departments of science as can entitle him to form an independent opinion on any subject of discussion within their range. ”

“ We do not mean to say that he laid down his principle in these words, or that he carried it to the utmost extreme: we mean that Bacon's ruling idea was the collection of enormous masses of facts, and then digested processes of arrangement and elimination, so artistically contrived, that a man of common intelligence, without any unusual sagacity, should be able to announce the truth sought for. ”

“ We think it possible that Harvey might allude to the legal character of Bacon's notions: we can hardly conceive so acute a man, after seeing what manner of writer Bacon was, meaning only that he was a lawyer and had better stick to his business. We do ourselves believe that Bacon's philosophy more resembles the action of mind of a common-law judge—not a Chancellor—than that of the physical inquirers who have been supposed to follow in his steps. ”

“ Bacon seems to us to think that the philosopher is a judge who has to choose, upon ascertained facts, which of known statutes is to rule the decision: he appears to us more like a person who is to write the statute-book, with no guide except the cases and decisions presented in all their confusion and all their conflict. ”

“ Man can know no more than he gets from observation, and yet mathematics is the great instrument of all exact inquiry. Are the results of mathematical deduction results of observation? We think it likely that Sir John Herschel would reply that Bacon, in coupling together observare re and observare mente, has done what some wags said Newton afterwards did in his study-door—cut a large hole of exit for the large cat, and a little hole for the little cat. ”

“ BASIS OF MODERN DISCOVERY. Modern discoveries have not been made by large collections of facts, with subsequent discussion, separation, and resulting deduction of a truth thus rendered perceptible. A few facts have suggested an hypothesis, which means a supposition, proper to explain them. The necessary results of this supposition are worked out, and then, and not till then, other facts are examined to see if these ulterior results are found in nature. ”

“ That Newton never mentions Bacon, nor alludes in any way to his works, passed for nothing. Here and there a paradoxer ventured not to find all this teaching in Bacon, but he was pronounced blind. In our day it begins to be seen that, great as Bacon was, and great as his book really is, he is not the philosophical father of modern discovery. ”

“ The question of the inhabitants of a particular planet is one which has truth on one side or the other: either there are some inhabitants, or there are none. Fortunately, it is of no consequence which is true. But there are many cases where the balance is equally one of truth and falsehood, in which the choice is a matter of importance. ”

“ For it is not unknown that Lactantius, a writer of prominence in other lines although but little versed in mathematics, spoke very childishly about the form of the earth when he ridiculed those who declared that it was spherical. Hence it should not seem strange to the learned if some shall look upon us in the same way. Mathematics is written for mathematicians, to whom these labors of ours will seem, if I mistake not, to add something even to the republic of the Church.... ”

“ We might dwell upon many points, especially if we attempted a more descriptive account of the valuable edition before us. No one need imagine that the editors, by their uncompromising attack upon the notion of Bacon's influence common even among mathematicians and experimental philosophers, have lowered the glory of the great man whom it was, many will think, their business to defend through thick and thin. ”

“ Had it not been for Newton, the whole dynasty of Greenwich astronomers, from Flamsteed of happy memory, to Airy whom Heaven preserve, [136] might have worked away at nightly observation and daily reduction, without any remarkable result: looking forward, as to a millennium, to the time when any man of moderate intelligence was to see the whole explanation. What are large collections of facts for? To make theories from, says Bacon: to try ready-made theories by, says the history of discovery: it's all the same, says the idolater: nonsense, say we! ”

“ The time arrives when, as in the case of Aristotle, a new deity is found, and the old one is consigned to shame and reproach. A reaction may afterwards take place, and this is now happening in the case of the Greek philosopher. The end of the process is, that the opposing deities take their places, side by side, in a Pantheon dedicated not to gods, but to heroes. ”

“ To show that we do not strain Bacon's meaning, we add what is said by Hooke, [118] whom we have already mentioned as his professed disciple, and, we believe, his only disciple of the day of Newton. We must, however, remind the reader that Hooke was very little of a mathematician, and spoke of algebra from his own idea of what others had told him:
"The intellect is not to be suffered to act without its helps, but is continually to be assisted by some method or engine, which shall be as a guide to regulate its actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss. ”

“ De magnitudine horum trium siderum, Solis, Lunæ, et Terræ. Emend. Dele verba horum trium siderum, quia terra non est sidus, ut facit eam Copernicus." [155]
We must not say we are not ashamed to acknowledge; assume is the word. We must not call this assumption a Divine work. A chapter must not be headed demonstration, but hypothesis. The earth must not be called a star; the word implies motion.
It will be seen that it does not take much to reduce Copernicus to pure hypothesis. ”

“ If by chance there shall be vain talkers who, although ignorant of all mathematics, yet taking it upon themselves to sit in judgment upon the subject on account of a certain passage of Scripture badly distorted for their purposes, shall have dared to criticize and censure this teaching of mine, I pay no attention to them, even to the extent of despising their judgment as rash. ”

“ A saying of the prophet Daniel, rather a hackneyed quotation in our day, Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia, stands in the title-page of the first edition of Montucla's History of Mathematics as a quotation from Bacon—and it is not the only place in which this mistake occurs. When the truth of the matter, as to Bacon's system, is fully recognized, we have little fear that there will be a reaction against the man. ”

“ My work selects, for the most part, sins against demonstration: but the world is full of questions of fact or opinion, in which a struggling minority will become a majority, or else will be gradually annihilated: and each of the cases subdivides into results of good, and results of evil. ”

“ All who have more positive notions as to either the composition or organization of other worlds, than the reasonable conclusion that our Architect must be quite able to construct millions of other buildings on millions of other plans, ought to rank with the writers just mentioned, in all but self-knowledge. Of every one of their systems I say, as the Irish Bishop said of Gulliver's book,—I don't believe half of it. ”

“ No knowledge of nature without experiment and observation: so said Aristotle, so said Bacon, so acted Copernicus, Tycho Brahé, [116] Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Harvey, etc., before Bacon wrote. [117] No derived knowledge until experiment and observation are concluded: so said Bacon, and no one else. ”

“ The whole dispute tacitly assumes that, if the stars and planets be inhabited, it must be by things of which we can form some idea. But for aught we know, what number of such bodies there are, so many organisms may there be, of which we have no way of thinking nor of speaking. ”

“ He was a member of many learned societies and had a large circle of acquaintances. He published numerous monographs and works on astronomy.
Gassendi (1592-1655) might well have been included by De Morgan in the group, since he knew and was a friend of most of the important mathematicians of his day. Like Mersenne, he was a minorite, but he was a friend of Galileo and Kepler, and wrote a work under the title Institutio astronomica, juxta hypotheses Copernici, Tychonis-Brahaei et Ptolemaei (1645) . He taught philosophy at Aix, and was later professor of mathematics at the College Royal at Paris. ”

“ He makes no allusion to the theory of equilibrium. He observes that a ball of one pound weight will fall nearly as fast through the air as a ball of two, without alluding to the theory of the acceleration of falling bodies, which had been made known by Galileo more than thirty years before. ”

“ All the allusion to Lactantius, who laughed at the notion of the earth being round, which was afterwards found true, is to be struck out.
(Cap. 5. lib. i. p. 3) "Copernicus. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus, videbitur hæc quæstio nondum absoluta, et ideireo minime contemnenda. Emend. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus, nihil refert an Terram in medio Mundi, an extra Medium existere, quoad solvendas cœlestium motuum apparentias existimemus." ”

“ Tom Fuller, a Virginian slave of the eighteenth century, although illiterate, gave the number of seconds in 7 years 17 days 12 hours after only a minute and a half of thought. Jedediah Buxton, an Englishman of the eighteenth century, was studied by the Royal Society because of his remarkable powers. Ampère, the physicist, made long calculations with pebbles at the age of four. Gauss, one of the few infant prodigies to become an adult prodigy, corrected his father's payroll at the age of three. ”

“ That his method is impracticable cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it. ”

“ All of these provinces are situated directly under the equinoctial line between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer; but they are two hundred fifty leagues nearer our tropic than the other. The name of Prester John signifies Great Lord, and is not Priest [Presbyter] as many think. He has always been a Christian, but often schismatic. At the present time he is a Catholic and recognizes the Pope as sovereign pontiff. I met one of his bishops in Jerusalem, and often conversed with him through the medium of our guide. ”

“ The first work is by Bishop Wilkins, being the third edition, [first in 1638] of the first book, "That the Moon may be a Planet"; and the first edition of the second work, "That the Earth may be a Planet." [See more under the reprint of 1802.] Whether other planets be inhabited or not, that is, crowded with organisations some of them having consciousness, is not for me to decide ”

“ Strike out the whole of the chapter from this to the end; it says that the motion of the earth is the most probable hypothesis.
(Cap. 9. lib. i. p. 7.) "Copernicus. Cum igitur nihil prohibeat mobilitatem Terræ, videndum nunc arbitror, an etiam plures illi motus conveniant, ut possit una errantium syderum existimari. Emend. Cum igitur Terram moveri assumpserim, videndum nunc arbitror, an etiam illi plures possint convenire motus." [149]
We must not say that nothing prohibits the motion of the earth, only that having assumed it, we may inquire whether our explanations require several motions. ”