IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB889974189

Beyond Recipes: The Baconian Natural and Experimental Histories as an Epistemic Genre (2020)

Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 62
Issue: 3
Pages: 447-464

URI: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1600-0498.12322

DOI: 10.1111/1600-0498.12322

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Literary analysis Epistemology Experimental philosophy Experiments and experimentation Formulas, recipes, etc... 17th century Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam

Abstract In 1622, Francis Bacon published his Historia naturalis et experimentalis. Many of the features of Bacon's natural and experimental histories were entirely new. This paper studies this literary form as a new epistemic genre. In particular, it analyzes its origin and evolution in Bacon's work, focusing on how its basic template and features were influenced by his specific epistemic requirements. It shows that Bacon devised these features in the process of developing a Historia mechanica, or a history of the mechanical arts, drawing on the particular case of the technical recipe. Since antiquity, the recipe had been the dominant epistemic genre for recording and communicating technical knowledge. However, this paper suggests that the recipe format did not meet Francis Bacon's epistemic needs. In particular, the format was incompatible with the goal of keeping experimentation and its reporting open-ended and flexible. More generally, the acknowledgment of the provisional, historical character of knowledge was a tenet of what Bacon called an ?initiative? method of knowledge transmission, or a method of ?probation.? According to this approach, knowledge ?ought to be delivered and intimated, if it were possible, in the same method wherein it was invented? and discovered. Only the display of its tentative features would encourage and stimulate others to improve and advance it. The format of the new genre of natural and experimental histories grew out of Bacon's dissatisfaction with the way in which recipes hid the imperfection of the process of knowledge production.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB889974189/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Arianna Borrelli; (2020)
Giovan Battista Della Porta's Construction of Pneumatic Phenomena and His Use of Recipes as Heuristic Tools (/isis/citation/CBB375390325/)

Article Dana Jalobeanu; (2020)
Enacting Recipes: Giovan Battista Della Porta and Francis Bacon on Technologies, Experiments, and Processes of Nature (/isis/citation/CBB517627491/)

Article Doina-Cristina Rusu; Dana Jalobeanu; (2020)
Giovan Battista Della Porta and Francis Bacon on the Creative Power of Experimentation (/isis/citation/CBB597860170/)

Article Kazuhiro Shibata; (2022)
The Development of Francis Bacon's Practical Instructions on the Prolongation of Life (/isis/citation/CBB423678923/)

Book Andrea Strazzoni; (2019)
Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB530504995/)

Thesis Samantha Snively; (2019)
Making Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century England: Recipes, Writing, and Experimentation (/isis/citation/CBB783502425/)

Article Catherine Abou-Nemeh; (2022)
Daring to Conjecture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sciences (/isis/citation/CBB506010564/)

Chapter Elizabeth Spiller; (2016)
Recipes for Knowledge: Maker’s Knowledge Traditions, Paracelsian Recipes, and the Invention of the Cookbook, 1600–1660 (/isis/citation/CBB783019144/)

Article Bruce T. Moran; (2021)
Court Authority and the University: Networks, Recipes, and Things-in-the-Making vs. the Abstractions of Made Things (/isis/citation/CBB242194040/)

Thesis Katherine Walker; (2018)
Reading the Natural and Preternatural Worlds in Early Modern Drama (/isis/citation/CBB464343984/)

Article Cesare Pastorino; (2017)
The Philosopher and the Craftsman: Francis Bacon’s Notion of Experiment and Its Debt to Early Stuart Inventors (/isis/citation/CBB204107949/)

Article Georgescu, Laura; Giurgea, Madalina; (2012)
Redefining the Role of Experiment in Bacon's Natural History: How Baconian Was Descartes before Emerging from His Cocoon? (/isis/citation/CBB001231587/)

Thesis Pastorino, Cesare; (2011)
Weighing Experience: Francis Bacon, the Inventions of the Mechanical Arts, and the Emergence of Modern Experiment (/isis/citation/CBB001562735/)

Article Dana Jalobeanu; (2015)
Disciplining Experience: Francis Bacon’s Experimental Series and the Art of Experimenting (/isis/citation/CBB629362291/)

Article Dana Jalobeanu; (2020)
Experiments in the Making: Instruments and Forms of Quantification in Francis Bacon’s Historia Densi et Rari (/isis/citation/CBB607498250/)

Article Corneanu, Sorana; Giglioni, Guido; Jalobeanu, Dana; (2012)
Introduction: The Place of Natural History in Francis Bacon's Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB001231580/)

Article Rusu, Doina-Cristina; (2012)
Francis Bacon: Constructing Natural Histories of the Invisible (/isis/citation/CBB001231585/)

Article Merchant, Carolyn; (2008)
“The Violence of Impediments”: Francis Bacon and the Origins of Experimentation (/isis/citation/CBB000950507/)

Article Pastorino, Cesare; (2011)
Weighing Experience: Experimental Histories and Francis Bacon's Quantitative Program (/isis/citation/CBB001220184/)

Article Sandrine Parageau; (2021)
« Colomb ignorant trouva le nouveau monde » : ignorance, découverte fortuite et expérimentation à la première modernité (/isis/citation/CBB363347228/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}