by In The Scientific Revolution, by Steven Shapin, Francis Bacon’s methodological formulation, that there is a certain “inductive method” for which man should use in order to educate people to think a certain and “correct” way so that they could understand and deduce natural facts is convoluted and misleading based on the intellectual and social factors of the time. Shapin previously states that historiographically, the demarcation between the two different types of factors of “intellectual factors”, or ideas, evidence and methods, and “social factors”, or political and social influences on science and social uses of science, aren’t too important because accounting for all factors in tracing the historical roots of scientific theory and discovery is what really matters. He later states that Bacon’s methodology was problematic due to it being essentially fact collecting and for it drawing incomplete conclusions based on the particulars collected. While that was a problem with the specific facts collected using his method, I think that it is the view that senses must be controlled and honed a certain way to in turn think a certain philosophical way is what makes the argument convoluted.
There were many other factors that influenced the legitimacy of Bacon’s assertions about the scientific method. Shapin stated that Bacon “agreed with many other 17th century philosophers that the uninstructed senses were apt to deceive and that the sense needed to be methodically disciplined if they were to yield authentic factual stuff that philosophical reason could work on.” Based on this premise, Shapin also argues that the senses had to be quite literally “controlled” based on Baconian ideology. Relating it to writings of Thomas Kuhn, anomalies and new discoveries were the sparks of scientific revolution. While having a certain dogmatic principles concerning the scientific truths helps with uniformity within the field, which may help with finding new natural yet unknown phenomena, the way that Shapin argues his principles is that it sounds limiting to the point where it may even hurt the process of scientific revolution. In other words, Bacon’s attempt at creating a specific thought process of philosophers for finding natural facts was flawed due to its view on almost controlling, thus making it difficult for anomalies that occur outside this philosophy to be recognized. Also, From our previous discussions with David Nye, technology is largely influenced by culture, thus could it be the case that Bacon’s method for “sharpening” the senses to better suited philosophical knowledge is biased in order to favor certain facts and not others? Perhaps. If David Nye’s argument that technology, for example the simple tools he states such as a hammer, wedges, levers, etc. which all at some point were considered as isolated new “experiences” by people and thus scientific or “philosophical” in nature, were largely affected by cultures that used them, then in turn, it can also be argued that the premises for Bacon’s method for deducing philosophical fact by imposing a set of almost overt constraints is largely affected by the mainly white male dominated society of the 17th century. This assertion, of course, brings up the argument that many of these philosophers like Bacon during this time, specifically those based in England because it had the largest concentration of them, had not only reputations as scholars, but also with mass of people that would’ve probably been influenced by these “experiences”, had a bit of motive to find absurdities in nature and have them be recognized as “fact”. Thus, there were definitely some social factors that played a significant role in influencing Bacon’s view.