Lack of method.
But how is one to set about experimenting? On this point Bacon is disappointing. His explanation of the rainbow, which is his longest illustration of the value of experimental science, is based merely on ordinary intelligent observation and reasoning, although he adds at the close that tests with instruments are needed and that consequently he will not assert that he has reached the full truth of the matter.[2156] Elsewhere he speaks of astronomical experiments “by instruments made for this purpose,” but seems to regard the unaided eyesight as sufficient for the investigation of terrestrial phenomena. Bacon has sent “over sea and to various other lands and to annual fairs, in order that I might see the things of nature with my own eyes.”[2157] “And those things which are not present in our locality we may know through other sages who have experienced them, just as Aristotle by authority of Alexander sent two thousand men to different regions to experience all things on the face of the earth, as Pliny testifies in his Natural History.”[2158] The one contemporary who most nearly fulfills Bacon’s ideal of what an experimental scientist should be, does not spend his time merely in reading, attending lectures, and engaging in disputations, but “is ashamed to have some layman or old wife or knight or rustic know facts of which he is ignorant”; hence he goes out into the world and observes the doings of common workingmen and even takes hints from the operations of witches, enchanters and magicians.[2159] Bacon even accepts the notion which we have already often met in other writers, that valuable medicines can be discovered by observing what remedies various animals employ. It would seem that experimental method is in a low state of its development, if it takes lessons from common human experience and from the actions of brutes. Bacon sufficiently indicates, however, that it does not consist merely of observation and casual experience, but includes purposive experimentation, and he often speaks of “experimenters.” Undoubtedly he himself experimented. But the fact remains that he gives no directions concerning either the proper environment for experimenting or the proper conduct of experiments. Of laboratory equipment, of scientific instruments, of exact measurements, he has no more notion apparently than his contemporaries.
Bacon and inventions.
It cannot be shown that Roger Bacon actually anticipated any of our modern inventions, nor that to him in particular were due any of the medieval inventions which revolutionized domestic life such as chimney flues and window panes, or navigation such as the rudder and mariner’s compass, or public and ecclesiastical architecture such as the pointed vault and flying buttress and stained glass, or reckoning and writing such as the Hindu-Arabic numerals and paper, or reading and seeing such as lenses and eye-glasses, or warfare such as gunpowder.[2160] We probably are justified, however, in accepting such passages in his works as the following, not merely as dreams that have been brought true by modern mechanical inventions, but as further indications that an interest existed in mechanical devices, and that men were already beginning to struggle with the problems which have recently been solved.
“Machines for navigation can be made without rowers so that the largest ships on rivers or seas will be moved by a single man in charge with greater velocity than if they were full of men. Also cars can be made so that without animals they will move with unbelievable rapidity; such we opine were the scythe-bearing chariots with which the men of old fought. Also flying machines can be constructed so that a man sits in the midst of the machine revolving some engine by which artificial wings are made to beat the air like a flying bird. Also a machine small in size for raising or lowering enormous weights, than which nothing is more useful in emergencies. For by a machine three fingers high and wide and of less size a man could free himself and his friends from all danger of prison and rise and descend. Also a machine can easily be made by which one man can draw a thousand to himself by violence against their wills, and attract other things in like manner. Also machines can be made for walking in the sea and rivers, even to the bottom without danger. For Alexander the Great employed such, that he might see the secrets of the deep, as Ethicus the astronomer tells. These machines were made in antiquity and they have certainly been made in our times, except possibly a flying machine which I have not seen nor do I know any one who has, but I know an expert who has thought out the way to make one. And such things can be made almost without limit, for instance, bridges across rivers without piers or other supports, and mechanisms, and unheard of engines.”[2161] Since Bacon’s authority concerning Alexander is unreliable and his conjectures concerning ancient scythe-bearing chariots unwarranted, we may also doubt if steamboats and automobiles had “certainly been made” in his day; but men may have been trying to accomplish such things.
Marvelous results expected.
Bacon says far more of the marvelous results which he expects experimental science to achieve than he does of the methods by which such results are to be attained. In the main marvelousness rather than practicability characterizes the aims which he proposes for scientia experimentalis. Indeed, of the three ways in which he represents it as superior to all other sciences, while one is that it employs sure proofs rather than mere arguments, two are that by it life may be greatly lengthened, and that from it a better knowledge of the future may be gained than even from astrology.[2162] Thus experimental method is especially connected with alchemy and astrology. Bacon declares that “it has been proved by certain experiments” that life can be greatly prolonged “by secret experiences.”[2163] and he believes that Artephius was enabled by such methods to live for a thousand and twenty-five years.[2164] Or experimental science may predict the weather by observing the behavior of animals.[2165]
Fantastic “experiments.”
Some of Bacon’s “experiments” are as fantastic as the aims are marvelous. “A good experimenter says in the book De regimine senum” that the following elixir will greatly prolong life: “that which is temperate in the fourth degree, and what swims in the sea, and what grows in the air, and what is cast up by the sea, and plant of India, and what is found in the entrails of an animal of long life, and those two serpents which are the food of the inhabitants of Tyre and Ethiopia.”[2166] We also are told that “at Paris recently there was a sage who asked for snakes and was given one and cut it into small sections except that the skin of its belly on which it crawled remained intact; and that snake crawled as best it could to a certain herb by touching which it was instantly made whole. And the experimenter collected an herb of wonderful virtue.”[2167]
Credulity essential.