Philosophy 2006 Lecture Notes - Empirical Evidence, Empiricism
15 Apr 2012
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Unit iv lecture iv march 8, 2012. [aristotelian] go out into the world, see that fire is hot, and it is hot because it has the power to make other things hot. So, fire is hot because it has the power to heat things. All other things heat because they have some fire in them. Bacon"s science is empirical and its aim is to provide us with means of controlling nature. Looking for only material and efficient causes. Formal and final causes are of no interest in bacon"s empiricism. Bacon calls knowledge of general laws of nature: magic . Bacon criticizes magic as it is normally practiced for 2 reasons: 1) their method, and 2) their goals. First, they fall into the same trap as aristotelians, when they assume there are simply 2 kinds of efficient causal relationships: sympathy & antipathy. They haven"t sufficiently established the truth of these principles.
