Review article
Bacon as the Core of the Early Modern Scientific Method: On the 400th Anniversary of the Death of Francis Bacon (1626–2
Stipe Kutleša
orcid.org/0009-0006-3376-1334
; Hrvatsko katoličko sveučilište, Zagreb, Hrvatska; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska
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* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The paper highlights two important features of early modern science: the empirical–
experimental approach to the study of nature and the importance of mathematics in
the description of nature. Francis Bacon contributed significantly to the first feature
of modern science. He criticized the deductive branch of Aristotle’s method of scientific
research and objected to it that the syllogistic method of reasoning was very questionable,
even useless for science. Instead, F. Bacon emphasized the “new” inductive
method (which was also important for Aristotle) and based it on the systematic
collection of facts and experimentation. Experiments and data analysis are the work
not of an individual but of many groups of scientists, so that in scientific research
there is a division of labour (in today’s terminology, experimentalists and theorists).
The ultimate goal of knowledge is to arrive at general principles (forms in Bacon’s
terminology) on the basis of empirical–experimental data. The paper challenges the
frequent claim that F. Bacon was the founder of experimentalism and shows that
medieval philosophers and scientists spoke of experimental science (scientia experimentalis)
and that Francis Bacon’s “new” method was not entirely new. F. Bacon,
with his more systematic approach to experimentation and its importance not only
in arriving at new theories but also in testing existing ones, can still be considered an
important theorist of experimentalism.
Keywords
Francis Bacon; Roger Bacon; Aristotle; inductivism; experimentalism; early modern science
Hrčak ID:
347272
URI
Publication date:
1.7.2026.
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