On the other hand, he looked to the arts, crafts, and occupations as a source of scientific principles. In his survey of learning he found some records of agriculture and likewise of many mechanical arts. Some think them a kind of dishonor. "But if my judgment be of any weight, the use of History Mechanical is, of all others, the most radical and fundamental towards natural philosophy." When the different arts are known, the senses will furnish sufficient concrete material for the information of the understanding. The record of the arts is of most use because it exhibits things in motion, and leads more directly to practice. "Upon this history, therefore, mechanical and illiberal as it may seem (all fineness and daintiness set aside), the greatest diligence must be bestowed." "Again, among the particular arts those are to be preferred which exhibit, alter, and prepare natural bodies and materials of things as agriculture, cooking, chemistry, dyeing; the manufacture of glass, enamel, sugar, gunpowder, artificial fires, paper and the like." Weaving, carpentry, architecture, manufacture of mills, clocks, etc. follow. The purpose is not solely to bring the arts to perfection, but all mechanical experiments should be as streams flowing from all sides into the sea of philosophy.
Shortly after James I came to the throne in 1603, Bacon published his Advancement of Learning. He continued in other writings, however, to develop the organization of knowledge, and in 1623 summed up his plan in the De Augmentis Scientiarum.
A recent writer (Pearson, 1900) has attempted to summarize Bacon's classification of the different branches of learning. When one compares this summary with an outline of the classification of knowledge made by the French monk, Hugo of St. Victor, who stands midway between Isidore of Seville (570-636) and Bacon, some points of resemblance are of course obvious. Moreover, Hugo, like Bacon, insisted on the importance of not being narrowly utilitarian. Men, he says, are often accustomed to value knowledge not on its own account but for what it yields. Thus it is with the arts of husbandry, weaving, painting, and the like, where skill is considered absolutely vain, unless it results in some useful product. If, however, we judged after this fashion of God's wisdom, then, no doubt, the creation would be preferred to the Creator. But wisdom is life, and the love of wisdom is the joy of life (felicitas vitæ).
Nevertheless, when we compare these classifications diligently, we find very marked differences between Bacon's views and the medieval. The weakest part of Hugo's classification is that which deals with natural philosophy. Physica, he says, undertakes the investigation of the causes of things in their effects, and of effects in their causes. It deals with the explanation of earthquakes, tides, the virtues of plants, the fierce instincts of wild animals, every species of stone, shrub, and reptile. When we turn to his special work, however, on this branch of knowledge, Concerning Beasts and Other Things, we find no attempt to subdivide the field of physica, but a series of details in botany, geology, zoölogy, and human anatomy, mostly arranged in dictionary form.
When we refer to Bacon's classification we find that Physics corresponds to Hugo's Physica. It studies natural phenomena in relation to their material causes. For this study, Natural History, according to Bacon, supplies the facts. Let us glance, then, at his work on natural history, and see how far he had advanced from the medieval toward the modern conception of the sciences.
For purposes of scientific study he divided the phenomena of the universe into (1) Celestial phenomena; (2) Atmosphere; (3) Globe; (4) Substance of earth, air, fire, water; (5) Genera, species, etc. Great scope is given to the natural history of man. The arts are classified as nature modified by man. History means, of course, descriptive science.