The acquisition of sound knowledge in astronomy and likewise in every other science rests primarily upon the observation of natural facts or phenomena and then upon deducing rational conclusions from such observation. Yet this seemingly simple rule had not been continuously and effectively applied in any period of history prior to the sixteenth century. The scientific method of most of the medieval as well as of the ancient scholars was essentially that of Aristotle. [Footnote: Exception to this sweeping generalization must be made in favor of several medieval scientists and philosophers, including—Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century.] This so-called deductive method of Aristotle assumed as a starting-point some general of principle as a premise or hypothesis and thence proceeded, by logical reasoning, to deduce concrete applications or consequences. It had been extremely valuable in stimulating the logical faculties and in showing men how to draw accurate conclusions, but it had shown a woeful inability to devise new general principles. It evolved an elaborate theology and a remarkable philosophy, but natural experimental science progressed relatively little until the deductive method of Aristotle was supplemented by the inductive method of Francis Bacon.
[Sidenote: Modern Method of Science: Introduction. Francis Bacon]
Aristotle was partially discredited by radical humanists, who made fun of the medieval scholars who had taken him most seriously, and by the Protestant reformers, who assailed the Catholic theology which had been carefully constructed by Aristotelian deduction. But it was reserved for Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon (1561-1626), to point out all the shortcomings of the ancient method and to propose a practicable supplement. A famous lawyer, lord chancellor of England under James I, a born scientist, a brilliant essayist, he wrote several philosophical works of first-rate importance, of which the Advancement of Learning (1604) and the Novum Organum (1620) are the most famous. It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and medieval thought and set forth the necessity of slow laborious observation of facts as antecedent to the assumption of any general principle.
[Sidenote: Descartes]
What of scientific method occurred to Lord Bacon appealed even more to the intellectual genius of the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1660). A curious combination of sincere practicing Catholic and of original daring rationalist was this man, traveling all about Europe, serving as a soldier in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, in Hungary, living in Holland, dying in Sweden, with a mind as restless as his body. Now interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about to dissect. The Discourse on Method (1637) and the Principles of Philosophy (1644), taken in conjunction with Bacon's work, ushered in a new scientific era, to some later phases of which we shall have occasion to refer in subsequent chapters.
ADDITIONAL READING
THE RENAISSANCE. GENERAL. Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I (1902), ch. xvi, xvii; Histoire générale, Vol. IV, ch. vii, viii, Vol. V, ch. x, xi; E. M. Hulme, Renaissance and Reformation, 2d ed. (1915), ch. v-vii, xix, xxix, xxx. More detailed accounts: Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. by S. G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols. (1878), 1 vol. ed. (1898), scholarly and profound; J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 5 parts in 7 vols. (1897-1898), interesting and suggestive but less reliable than Burckhardt; Ludwig Geiger, Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1882), in the great Oncken Series; F. X. Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen Kunst, 2 vols. in 4 (1896-1908), a monumental work of great interest and importance, by a German Catholic.
HUMANISM. The best description of the rise and spread of humanism is J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. II (1908). For the spirit of early humanism see H. C. Hollway-Calthrop, Petrarch: his Life and Times (1907); J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters, 2d ed. (1914), a selection from Petrarch's letters to Boccaccio and other contemporaries, translated into English, with a valuable introduction; Pierre de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l'humanisme, 2d ed., 2 vols. in 1 (1907). Of the antecedents of humanism a convenient summary is presented by Louise Loomis, Mediæval Hellenism (1906). A popular biography of Erasmus is that of Ephraim Emerton, Desiderius Erasmus (1899); the Latin Letters of Erasmus are now (1916) in course of publication by P. S. Allen; F. M. Nichols, The Epistles of Erasmus, 2 vols. (1901-1906), an excellent translation of letters written prior to 1517; Erasmus's Praise of Folly, in English translation, is obtainable in many editions. D. F. Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, his Life and Times, trans. by Mrs. G. Sturge (1874), gives a good account of the whole humanistic movement and treats Hutten very sympathetically; The Letters of Obscure Men, to which Hutten contributed, were published, with English translation, by F. G. Stokes in 1909. An excellent edition of The Utopia of Sir Thomas More, the famous English humanist, is that of George Sampson (1910), containing also an English translation and the charming contemporary Biography by More's son-in-law, William Roper. The standard summary of the work of the humanists is the German writing of Georg Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, 3d ed., 2 vols. (1893). Interesting extracts from the writings of a considerable variety of humanists are translated by Merrick Whitcomb in his Literary Source Books of the Renaissance in Germany and in Italy (1898-1899).
INVENTION OF PRINTING. T. L. De Vinne, Invention of Printing, 2d ed. (1878), and, by the same author, Notable Printers of Italy during the Fifteenth Century (1910), two valuable works by an eminent authority on the subject; G. H. Putnam, Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (1896-1897), a useful contribution of another experienced publisher; Johannes Janssen, History of the German People, Vol. I, Book I, ch. i. There is an interesting essay on "Publication before Printing" by R. K. Root in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. XXVIII (1913), pp. 417-431.
NATIONAL LITERATURES. Among the many extended bibliographies of national literatures the student certainly should be familiar with the Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, 12 vols. (1907-1916); and with G. Lanson, Manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne, 1500-1900, 4 vols. (1909-1913). See also, as suggestive references, Pasquale Villari, The Life and Times of Machiavelli, 2 vols. in i (1898); A. A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance, 2 vols. (1904); George Saintsbury, A History of Elizabethan Literature (1887); and Sir Sidney Lee, Life of Shakespeare, new rev. ed. (1915).