he is commonly regarded as the "Father of Experimental
Philosophy" and the originator of the inductive method. Men profess
themselves followers of the "Baconian philosophy," sometimes confounding
that with a servile attention to facts and a most unscientific scorn of
theories; at other times implying that by the Baconian method is to be
understood the one on which science has successfully been pursued. A
rigorous investigation of Bacon's claims will disclose the truth of his
own statement, that he was rather one who sounded the trumpet-call than
one who marshalled the troops. He insisted on the importance of
experiment, but he could not teach what he did not himself
understand--the experimental method. He exhorted men to study nature;
but he could not give available directions for that study. He had
fervent faith in the possible conquests of science; but never having
thoroughly mastered any one science, he was incapable of appreciating
the real conditions of research. He saw clearly enough the great truth
that the progress of research must be gradual, but he did not see what
were the necessary grades, he did not see the kind of inquiries, and the
order they must follow before discoveries could be made.

That he had really but vague and imperfect conceptions of scientific
method is decisively shown by his contemptuous rejection of Copernicus,
Galileo, and Gilbert, and by his own plan of investigation into heat.
One sentence alone would suffice to show this, namely, his sneer at
Copernicus as "a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any
kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well." Bacon did
not understand, what Copernicus profoundly saw, that the only value of
an hypothesis was its reconciliation of calculations with observations.
In his plan for an inquisition into the nature of heat, we see a total
misconception of the scientific process; not only does he set about in a
laboriously erroneous way, but he seeks that which science proclaims
inaccessible, the nature of heat. It is true that he arrives at a
hypothesis which bears some resemblance to the hypothesis now accepted,
namely, that heat is a mode of motion--"an expansive and restrained
motion, modified in certain ways, and exerted in the smaller particles
of the body." But those who have been eager to credit him with an
anticipation of modern views on the strength of this definition, have
overlooked the fact that it is incapable of explaini