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Modern Philosophy

Francis Bacon and the Scientific Revolution

The new experimental method and institutional vision that Francis Bacon and his contemporaries forged as the foundation of modern natural science, from the critique of inherited "idols" of thought to Galileo's mathematized nature and Newton's new cosmic order.

60-Second Review

Express review

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

  1. Bacon's Novum Organum and the Idols of the Mind. Bacon's Novum Organum (1620) diagnoses four "idols" that corrupt the human understanding.
  2. Induction, Experiment, and the New Method. Bacon proposed a graduated, tabular induction from particular observations to general axioms.
  3. Bacon's Vision of Scientific Institutions in New Atlantis. New Atlantis (1627) imagines Salomon's House, a research institution that inspired the Royal Society.
  4. Galileo and the Mathematization of Nature. Galileo joined telescopic observation with mathematical physics, defying Aristotelian qualitative science.
  5. The Copernican Revolution and Its Philosophical Consequences. Copernicus's 1543 heliocentric model displaced Earth from the cosmic center, unsettling inherited philosophy.
  6. Mechanistic Philosophy and the Rejection of Aristotelian Physics. Descartes and others replaced Aristotelian forms with matter and motion governed by mechanical law.
  7. Newton's Principia and the New Cosmic Order. Newton's Principia (1687) unified terrestrial and celestial mechanics under universal gravitation.
  8. The Scientific Revolution's Impact on Philosophical Method. The new science reshaped epistemology, spurring rationalism, empiricism, and new scientific societies.

This module continues after "British Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume" in the syllabus. If you haven't reviewed it yet, it may help set the context.

Key points

Visual module map

1Bacon's Novum Organum and the Idols of the Mind
2Bacon's Vision of Scientific Institutions in New Atlantis
3The Copernican Revolution and Its Philosophical Consequences
4Mechanistic Philosophy and the Rejection of Aristotelian Physics
5The Scientific Revolution's Impact on Philosophical Method

Alternative visual view: a simplified sequence of some of the module's key points, in their order within the syllabus.

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Final test

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Memory

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Chronological Order

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Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • Bacon, F. (1620/2000). The New Organon (L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne, Eds. and Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kuhn, T.S. (1957). The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Shapin, S. (1996). The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Gaukroger, S. (2001). Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Westfall, R.S. (1980). Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row.