November 16, 2018 Friday
Bedtime Story
What Bacon was Critical of
The Pillars shown on the cover page of ‘Novum
Organum Scientiarum’ symbolize the opening to the unknown West (it was
literally an unchartered Atlantic Ocean to the West of Europe).
The galleon passing between the pillars and
exiting the Mediterranean represents the new empirical investigation that Bacon
hoped would smash the old prevailing ideas and usher in a new way of
understanding the world and nature.
To a large extent the front page of the book
was copied from 1606 Regimiento de Navegacion or the Navigation Regiment.
At the bottom of the sailing ship is a
Latin phrase that was taken out from the Old Testament (Daniel 12:4 to be
precise) that says:
Multi pertransibunt & augebitur
scientia
This translates into “Many will travel and
knowledge will be increased.”
(Bible does has something sensible after
all if cherry-picked smartly enough).
Bacon’s treatise begins as follows:
“Now my plan is as easy to describe as it
is difficult to effect.
For it is to establish degrees of
certainty, take care of the sense by a kind of reduction , but to reject for
the most part of the work of the mind that follows upon sense; in fact I mean
to open up and lay down a new and certain pathway from the perceptions of the
senses themselves to the mind.”
The language is bit cryptic but let me
decode the message for you.
What Bacon is suggesting is very revolutionary
for that time of the period.
Bacon is extremely critical of A Priori
(from the earlier) knowledge that is totally independent of observation and
relies upon totally upon deduction from pure reasoning.
Euclid’s geometry is a good example though
an imperfect one since geometry and its axioms arose from observations of
objects and shapes on this planet.
For instance the first axiom “To produce a
finite straight line continuously in a straight line” came from observation of
the natural world.
Perhaps the perfect example of a priori
knowledge is a tautology such as “If the government of India survived for five
years then it definitely lasted four years”.
This is a perfectly logical and correct
reasoning that needs no observation and can be derived from pure reasoning.
Now consider the second statement “The
previous government lasted for full ten years thus completing its two mandated
terms” is an example of A posteriori reasoning that is built upon observation
and is an empirical fact that no reasoning can arrive at on its own.
Bacon argues that observation ought to be
the beginning of natural philosophy which in turn means that no matter how
imperfect they may be natural philosophy must begin from our senses.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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