Bacon and Novum Organum

No, this is not a food blog!

I stumbled upon Sir Francis Bacon's Novum Organum recently ("A New Instrument," written in 1620), and am dumbfounded that this was not required reading in college.  Where has this been all my life!?  It clearly, simply, and convincingly establishes the basis of the scientific method, which changed the Western world forever and led to the astounding scientific advances of the succeeding centuries, right up to today.

Most of us are familiar with how revered the ancient Greek philosphers were to people in the 16th through 18th centuries, but I think few of us realize what a handicap that was and how it stunted human development for millennia.  The ideas of Aristotle, Plato, and their contemporaries and students were held as nearly inviolable, unchangeable, and as the last word in understanding Nature.  The handicap was three-fold: first, the Greeks were just plain wrong about many aspects of Nature (especially Plato, who force-fit his reasoning into pre-ordained dogma); second, their sophistry lacked experiment, testing, and a quest for results; and third, when "the answer" is supposedly known, there is no incentive for further inquiry.  Bacon criticized their endless arguing without experiments, tests, and inquiries, and their frustrating lack of fruits -- no objectives other than philosophical satisfaction.

Paraphrasing Bacon, "I'm writing this not because I'm the most brilliant person, but rather because it is time.  The astounding thing is that no one had written this before."

He discusses the proper relation of philosophy and science as a feedback loop, the necessary separation of science from religion and politics, the fallibility of human senses, the limitations of human nature and society on science, and the weakness of language and the distinction between words and things/ideas, all before proposing a systematic method to investigate Nature.  It's the perfect paper.

The lessons taught by Bacon in 1620 are still vital today.  Much of the fruitless public discourse on science's proper role was roundly refuted four centuries ago.  Why are we still having the same discussion?