Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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3 Pérez-Ramos, A., Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition, Oxford, 1988, pp. 7–41Google Scholar for an assessment of these studies. A recent Baconian apologia from a Popperian view point is Urbach, Peter's Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science, La Salle, 1987.Google Scholar
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8 The literature on this topic is immense, but I refer the reader to Funkenstein, A.'s masterly Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Princeton, 1986, pp. 12–22Google Scholar and passim. Cf. my review of this book (‘And Justify the Ways of God to Men’) in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, forthcoming 1990.Google Scholar
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16 Aristotle's position could justify both approaches. Astronomy is a branch of mathematics in Metaphysica I, 8Google Scholar; XII, 8; a branch of natural philosophy in Physica II, 2Google Scholar. Later commentators like Simplicius tried to conciliate both views: the natural philosopher is concerned with the essence of the heavenly bodies and their qualities; the astronomer dwells on their relative sizes and distances, and on the configuration of their motions. If both want to prove eg. that the Earth is round, Simplicius argues, they do it by different routes: In Aristotelis physicorum libros quatuor priores commentarla, (ed. Diels, H., 2 vols, Berlin 1882/1895), B. 2. pp. 291f.Google Scholar
17 Cf. Krafft, Fritz, ‘Physikalische Realität oder mathematische Hypothese? Andreas Osiander und die physikalische Erneuerung der antiken Astronomie durch Nikolaus Copernicus’, Philosophia Naturalis (1972), 14, pp. 243–275Google Scholar; Westman, R.S., ‘The Astronomer's Role in the 16th Century: A Preliminary Study’, History of Science (1980), 18, pp. 105–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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20 The Works of Francis Bacon, (eds Elis, R.L., Spedding, J. and Heath, D.D.), 14 vols, London, 1857–1874Google Scholar, reprinted Stuttgart, 1961–1963, Vol. i, pp. 551–554; IV, 347–349: ‘Such demonstrations, however, only show how all these things [i.e. the heavenly phenomena] may be ingeniously made out and disentangled, not how they may truly subsist in Nature; and indicate the apparent motions only, and a system of machinery [machinam] arbitrarily devised and arranged to produce them—not the very causes and the truth of things [non causas ipsas et veritatem rerum]. Wherefore astronomy, as it now is, is fairly enough ranked among the mathematical arts, not without disparagement to its dignity; seeing that, if it chose to maintain its proper office [proprias partes], it ought rather to be accounted as the noblest part of physics (IV, 348–349; V, 553).
21 Descartes refers to Bacon's method in astronomy in a letter to Mersenne, , Oeuvres de Descartes, (ed. Adam, C. and Tannery, P.), Paris, 1897–1910, vol. i, pp. 251–252Google Scholar, on ‘l'histoire des apparences célestes, selon la méthode de Vérulamius’. Cf. Pérez-Ramos, A., Francis Bacon's Idea of Science, op. cit. (3), pp. 10ff.Google Scholar
22 Rees, Graham, ‘Francis Bacon's Semi-Paracelsian Cosmology’, op. cit. (14), p. 81.Google Scholar
23 Cf. Rossi, P., ‘Venti, Maree e ipotesi astronomiche in Bacone e Galilei’, Aspetti della rivoluzione scientifica, Naples, 1971, pp. 151–222.Google Scholar
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25 Preface to the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis, III, 715–726, p. 716.Google Scholar
26 Cf. Grant, E., Much Ado About Nothing. Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 182–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosen, E., ‘Francesco Patrizi and the Celestial Spheres’, Physis, (1984), 26, pp. 305–324Google Scholar; ‘The Dissolution of the Solid Celestial Spheres’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1985), 46, pp. 113–131.Google Scholar
27 Cf. also Thema Coeli III, 557Google Scholar; V, 778. For a survey of contemporary views on this matter, cf. Jardine, N.'s ‘The Status of Astronomy’, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science. Kepler's Defence of Tycho Against Ursus with Essays on its Provenance and Significance, Cambridge, 1984, pp. 225–257Google Scholar. Even Pascal in a letter to Noël, E. (29 10 1647)Google Scholar resorts to the same argument as Bacon in order to dismiss the claims of astronomy: ‘C'est ainsi que, quand on discourt humainement du mouvement ou de la stabilité de la Terre, tous les phénomènes des mouvements et rétrogradations des planètes s'ensuivent parfaitement des hypothèses de Ptolémée, de Tycho, de Copernic et de beaucoup d'autres qu'on peut faire, de toutes lesquelles une seule peut ètre véritable’, Oeuvres Complètes, (ed. Mesnard, J.), Paris, 1964, vol. ii (1970), p. 524.Google Scholar
28 ‘Nor is body acted on except by body [neque corpus nisi a corpore patitur]’, III, 762Google Scholar; V, 537; and Novum Organum I, 4Google Scholar. Cf. Hesse, M., Forces and Fields. The Concept of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics (London, 1961), pp. 91–97Google Scholar; p. 95: ‘Magnetism and gravity are the only physical phenomena for which Bacon can conceive no corpuscular explanation’ (italics in the original).
29 That is, not as the result of induction: cf. III, 780; V, 559.
30 For an analysis of this experiment, cf. Pérez-Ramos, A., Francis Bacon's Idea of Science, op. cit. (3), pp. 247–249Google Scholar. In the Historia Ventorum (1622)Google Scholar Bacon returned to this topic and expatiated on the ‘general wind’ (cf. II, 26–27; V, 147).
31 On the Baconian concept of historia naturalis cf. Gavazza, M., ‘Concept baconien d'histoire naturelle’, Les Études Philosophiques (1985), pp. 405–414Google Scholar. Kambartel, F. has studied the sources and development of that concept in Erfahrung und Struktur. Bausteine zu einer Kritik des Empirismus und Formalismus (Frankfurt-On-Main, 1976, 2nd edn), pp. 50–86.Google Scholar
32 There is a mistranslation in the Spanish text. The Latin reads mobilem constantiam (Spedding rightly corrected the original nobilem of the 1653 edition). In neither case is ‘razonable constancia’ admissible.