The New Organon
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Published in 1620, Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, commonly known in English as The New Organon, sets out a bold programme for renewing human knowledge through observation, experiment and systematic inquiry. Challenging the authority of inherited assumptions and purely deductive reasoning, Bacon argues that the mind must be disciplined against its own prejudices if it is to understand the natural world. His famous account of the “idols” that distort human judgement identifies the habits of thought, language and tradition that obstruct genuine discovery.
Conceived as part of Bacon’s larger project for the advancement of learning, the work proposes an inductive method grounded in the careful accumulation and interpretation of evidence. Its vision of knowledge as an active enterprise, directed towards the understanding and practical transformation of nature, helped shape the intellectual foundations of modern science. Though its methods have been superseded in important respects, The New Organon remains a landmark in the history of scientific thought and a compelling statement of the need to question what we believe we know.
From the book
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one.”
— Francis Bacon, The New Organon, Book I, Aphorism 3
On The New Organon
“Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature.”
— Francis Bacon, The New Organon, Book I, Aphorism 1, translation by Basil Montague