Dana Jalobeanu

Newton’s first published paper on light and colors begins with a Baconian ’historical narration’ about the context, origin, methodology, and development of the experimentum crucis. This chapter explores elements of Bacon’s method of natural history at play in Newton’s paper. The chapter shows that the construction of Newton’s paper follows Baconian rules for the writing of natural history, while his development of experiments and construction of facts have features of the Baconian experientia literata. This involves a historical reconstruction and philosophical interpretation of the methodology and theoretical structure of Bacon’s Latin natural histories, particularly _Historia densi et rari_, _Historia vitae et mortis_, and _Sylva sylvarum_. The chapter then explores the debate around Newton’s theory of light and colors, showing ways in which Newton’s opponents read his first paper as an exercise of Baconian natural history.

Francis Bacon introduced his contemporaries to a new way of investigating nature. He called it "natural and experimental history." Despite its rather traditional name, Bacon's natural and experimental history was a new discipline: it comprised new ideas, new practices and new models of collaborative research. This new discipline was, in many ways, a surprisingly successful project. It provided early modern naturalists with tools, methods and models for both investigating nature and writing about their subject. It also offered a set of norms and values for guiding research. And yet, this new discipline was not a science of nature -- it was more like an art. This book aims to trace the emergence, evolution and reception of Francis Bacon's art of experimental natural history.

The instrumental character of Francis Bacon’s natural and experimental histories was often noted, but never fully investigated. In this paper I aim to reconstruct the theoretical and methodological background which supports this feature. I claim that we can read large parts of the second book of Bacon’s Novum organum as a guide to laboratory practices; and that it was read in this manner by some of Bacon’s seventeenth century followers. Key to this guide is Bacon’s theory of prerogative instances which, in turn, provides the grounding for a whole theory of instruments of detection and instruments of measurement. I show, in particular, how Bacon suggested that such instruments can be used for ‘charting’ virtues and powers; a process in which instruments of detection can be transformed into instruments of measurement. I also show that Bacon’s views on instruments entail an elaborated conception of measurement which departs from the ethos of artisanal perfection. Instead of pursuing the ‘best results’, Bacon’s instrumental natural and experimental histories aim to offer a large enough corpus of correlations, estimates and calculations which, taken together, can represent more or less accurately changes and variations of natural virtues and powers.

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students.