HUMA 1905 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Novum Organum, Luigi Galvani, Nicolaus Copernicus
23 Nov 2017
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The shadow of reason: gothic, romanticism, and the mad scientist. For the sake of the class discussion, proto-science fiction refers to every speculative fiction story that came before frankenstein. The common theme of the proto-sf is fantastic voyage . Gilgamesh (c2000 bce), the odyssey (c750 bce) by homer, gulliver"s travels , etc. During these time periods we begin to see significant changes in thinking revolving around science and how it is used to understand, predict, and control nature. Francis bacon (1561-1626) is noted as a figure in history who argued that the possibility of scientific knowledge could be based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observations of events in nature. He was an advocate of utilising the scientific method, which involved the use of empiricism (all knowledge derived from sense-experience) and experiment. In 1620 he published a philosophical work on the subject, titled novum organum , meaning new instrument".
