Pastorino, Cesare (Author)
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
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/)
Book
Andrea Strazzoni;
(2019)
Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB530504995/)
Article
Catherine Abou-Nemeh;
(2022)
Daring to Conjecture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB506010564/)
Article
Kazuhiro Shibata;
(2022)
The Development of Francis Bacon's Practical Instructions on the Prolongation of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB423678923/)
Chapter
Elizabeth Spiller;
(2016)
Recipes for Knowledge: Maker’s Knowledge Traditions, Paracelsian Recipes, and the Invention of the Cookbook, 1600–1660
(/isis/citation/CBB783019144/)
Thesis
Samantha Snively;
(2019)
Making Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century England: Recipes, Writing, and Experimentation
(/isis/citation/CBB783502425/)
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
Siobhan Chapman;
(2018)
The Experimental and the Empirical: Arne Naess' Statistical Approach to Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB172340733/)
Article
Hagop Sarkissian;
(2018)
Neo-Confucianism, Experimental Philosophy and the Trouble with Intuitive Methods
(/isis/citation/CBB499524958/)
Article
Alberto Vanzo;
(2018)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB104149827/)
Article
Alexander Klein;
(2018)
The Curious Case of the Decapitated Frog: On Experiment and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB887783684/)
Article
Guy Longworth;
(2018)
The Ordinary and the Experimental: Cook Wilson and Austin on Method in Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB482153359/)
Article
Andrew Cooper;
(2017)
Kant and Experimental Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB741692479/)
Article
Mordechai Feingold;
(2016)
“Experimental Philosophy”: Invention and Rebirth of a Seventeenth-Century Concept
(/isis/citation/CBB091437409/)
Article
Dana Jalobeanu;
(2020)
Experiments in the Making: Instruments and Forms of Quantification in Francis Bacon’s Historia Densi et Rari
(/isis/citation/CBB607498250/)
Book
David Carroll Simon;
(2018)
Light without Heat: The Observational Mood from Bacon to Milton
(/isis/citation/CBB010485781/)
Article
Sandrine Parageau;
(2021)
« Colomb ignorant trouva le nouveau monde » : ignorance, découverte fortuite et expérimentation à la première modernité
(/isis/citation/CBB363347228/)
Be the first to comment!