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And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

by Cyph0n 6y ago

yesenadam 6y ago
That seems irrelevant - I wasn't at all talking about which individuals were recognizably doing science, but where (the program of) modern science came from. Bacon didn't do science, didn't 'employ the scientific method', just wrote about and promoted a huge program of scientific investigation, which is what we call 'modern science'. From The Oxford Francis Bacon: Before Bacon where else does one find a meticulously articulated view of [science] as an enterprise of instruments and experiment, an enterprise designed to restrain discursive reason and make good the defects of the senses? Where else in the literature before Bacon does one come across a stripped-down natural-historical programme of such enormous scope and scrupulous precision, and designed to serve as the basis for a complete reconstruction of human knowledge which would generate new, vastly productive sciences through a form of eliminative induction supported by various other procedures including deduction? Where else does one find a concept of scientific research which implies an institutional framework of such proportions that it required generations of permanent state funding to sustain it? And all this accompanied by a thorough, searching, and devastating attack on ancient and not-so-ancient philosophies, and by a provisional [science] anticipating the results of the new [science]? But thanks, I didn't know anything about Ibn al-Haytham, e.g. that his Book of Optics (written 1011-1021) "was read by and greatly influenced a number of scholars in Christian Europe including: Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Witelo, Giambattista della Porta, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, René Descartes, and Johannes Kepler"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham
- Cyph0n 6y ago
  Ah, I have always associated Bacon with the scientific method and was not aware of the wider program he developed. But I still do not see my comment as irrelevant. Would Bacon have been able to develop his program without learning from the efforts of scientists who worked to apply the scientific method in the real world?
  - afarrell 6y ago
    I suspect the lesson here is: There are often people who have happened upon a valuable way-of-working but who have not yet thought enough about it to explain it in a way that many others can notice and scalably copy.
LanceH 6y ago
Then you also get into the problems of multiple independent discoveries, or convergent research. Or whether someone's discovery is relevant at all if nobody learns from it -- that is, what is the value of popularizing a method over its mere discovery?
- Cyph0n 6y ago
  Right, but that goes back to the original point, which I am in agreement with: it is usually tough to pinpoint a single, specific person who was responsible for a discovery or invention. And as you noted, it can also depend on how you frame the discovery and its impact.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

by Cyph0n 6y ago

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

That seems irrelevant - I wasn't at all talking about which individuals were recognizably doing science, but where (the program of) modern science came from. Bacon didn't do science, didn't 'employ the scientific method', just wrote about and promoted a huge program of scientific investigation, which is what we call 'modern science'. From The Oxford Francis Bacon: Before Bacon where else does one find a meticulously articulated view of [science] as an enterprise of instruments and experiment, an enterprise designed to restrain discursive reason and make good the defects of the senses? Where else in the literature before Bacon does one come across a stripped-down natural-historical programme of such enormous scope and scrupulous precision, and designed to serve as the basis for a complete reconstruction of human knowledge which would generate new, vastly productive sciences through a form of eliminative induction supported by various other procedures including deduction? Where else does one find a concept of scientific research which implies an institutional framework of such proportions that it required generations of permanent state funding to sustain it? And all this accompanied by a thorough, searching, and devastating attack on ancient and not-so-ancient philosophies, and by a provisional [science] anticipating the results of the new [science]? But thanks, I didn't know anything about Ibn al-Haytham, e.g. that his Book of Optics (written 1011-1021) "was read by and greatly influenced a number of scholars in Christian Europe including: Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Witelo, Giambattista della Porta, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, René Descartes, and Johannes Kepler"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

Cyph0n 6y ago
Ah, I have always associated Bacon with the scientific method and was not aware of the wider program he developed. But I still do not see my comment as irrelevant. Would Bacon have been able to develop his program without learning from the efforts of scientists who worked to apply the scientific method in the real world?
- afarrell 6y ago
  I suspect the lesson here is: There are often people who have happened upon a valuable way-of-working but who have not yet thought enough about it to explain it in a way that many others can notice and scalably copy.

LanceH 6y ago

Then you also get into the problems of multiple independent discoveries, or convergent research. Or whether someone's discovery is relevant at all if nobody learns from it -- that is, what is the value of popularizing a method over its mere discovery?

Cyph0n 6y ago
Right, but that goes back to the original point, which I am in agreement with: it is usually tough to pinpoint a single, specific person who was responsible for a discovery or invention. And as you noted, it can also depend on how you frame the discovery and its impact.