On Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum

Sylva Sylvarum is Francis Bacon's last work as well as the epitome of Baconian natural history. In order to realize his dream of "the Great Instauration" of the scientific enterprise, Bacon bent on the synthetic natural history, aiming at exemplifying his new model of natural history, new experimentation and new scientific thoughts. Furthermore, this last work reflects the efforts and accomplishment which Bacon endeavored to polish his scientific thoughts and methodology till the end of his life.A comprehensive research on Sylva Sylvarum is carried out on the basis of interpretation of the original documents and with reference to the theories and methodology of history of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, sociology of knowledge and philology. First of all, efforts are made to glean original versions as complete as possible of Sylva Sylvarum and other related works of Francis Bacon, and The Works of Francis Bacon edited by James Spedding etc. as well. In the second place, obtained is the critic information of the background and motivation of Bacon's compiling Sylva Sylvarum through scrutinizing it and its position in Bacon's knowledge system. Finally, the correlation between Sylva Sylvarum and other works is reveled, and Baconian scientific thoughts and experimentation reflected in Sylva Sylvarum is analyzed, with reference to the theories and methodology of history of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, sociology of knowledge and philology, given the historical background of Francis Bacon's time, compared with other related works of Francis Bacon. Consequently, conclusions are drawn.The first chapter of the dissertation consists of a brief introduction of the main contents and structure of Sylva Sylvarum, and the historical information such as the publishing time of its first version, etc. Furthermore, the significance of the research is concisely explained, based on the summarization of the history and current condition of the related research, discussion of the present problems. At the end of the chapter, the research method, direction and goal of the dissertation are expounded.The second chapter is a short autography of Francis Bacon. First, narrated are the stories and events which were connected with the development of his scientific thoughts and methodology, including his family background, education, friends and social activities. Secondly, main viewpoints of Baconian natural philosophy and scientific thoughts and methodology are delineated in a conclusive way. Finally, a detailed elucidation of Sylva Sylvarum is present, including its background, expatiation of the meaning of its title in Latin and English, the contents, similarities and dissimilarities between versions, and its contemporary influence domestic and abroad as well.Since Sylva Sylvarum is a new model of natural history compiled in accordance with the traditional occidental epistemic genre historia, it is of extreme necessity for us, especially the oriental scientific historians, to acquaint ourselves with and obtain insight into the history and vicissitude of historia. Therefore, in Chapter 3, provided are a brief outline of the research achievement and conclusions of foreign researchers on historia and natural history, covering a realm from the origin and vicissitude of historia, its important branch natural history, one of the fist natural histories and one of the most influential—Pliny the Elder's Natural History, to the resurrection and unprecedented compiling vehement of historiae and natural histories in the early modern time, and the epoch characteristics of historia and natural history at that time.In Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon took advantage of 1,000 experiments to demonstrate his experimentation, scientific thoughts and speculative natural philosophy with examples. Through analyzing these experiments with reference to Bacon's other related works, the object of this dissertation is to expose the hitherto undetected five features of Baconian scientific thoughts and experimentation and dispel the obscurity of some key terminologies in Bacon's natural philosophy:First of all, though as an epitome of Baconian natural history, Sylva Sylvarum inherits the legacy of Greek historia, it represents an innovation and breakthrough with the ancient tradition by laying emphasis on the history of arts and mechanics and accentuates the importance of artificial experiments in the making of knowledge. Based on Sylva Sylvarum and by consulting Bacon's works such as Novum Organum, this dissertation for the first time brings to light that actually Bacon had clarified the chaos of distinction between "experience" and "experiment". Consequently, his experiments possess the prototype of modern scientific experiment with presupposition and definite aim. Bacon believes that nature reveals her secrets if she is interrogated by means of this kind of experiments and arts and mechanics, hence experience is upgraded to experiment. These Baconian scientific thoughts are the foundation of compiling Sylva Sylvarum which embodies the Baconian requirement for new model of natural and experimental history and criteria of new type of experiment. Therefore, Sylva Sylvarum is actually an "experimental natural history", an outstanding characteristic of Sylva Sylvarum which was hitherto disregarded.In the second place, as a matter of fact, there are three types of experiments in Sylva Sylvarum. According to Bacon's own classification, there are two, namely, solitary experiment and experiments in consort. However, there is a third group of experiments, "serial experiments" as they are called in this dissertation, which are scattered in Sylva Sylvarum and in which each latter experiment is based on the former ones. By taking advantage of the classification of the three groups, the features of each group and the Baconian scientific thoughts, methodology and experimentation reflected by them are expounded and inquired into correspondingly.In the third place, in the dissertation a distinctly common feature of the experiments in Sylva Sylvarum is unveiled, namely a general fixed model abided by almost all the experiments:facts→inquisition→causes→axiom, which corresponds with the Baconian experimental criteria of presupposition and definite aim. He hopes that by following the model people can easily find the faults and problems in the predecessors'experiments and design new ones to promote knowledge. In order to collectively expound the common feature of the experiments in Sylva Sylvarum, a typical solitary experiment is selected. Moreover, following the analysis of the experiment, discussed is the way how Bacon drew the axiom and his speculative natural philosophy on the mechanism of motion and change.In the fourth place, misleading and anachronistic is the received opinion that Bacon ignored the usefulness of mathematics in sciences, that is, Bacon paid little attention to quantitative relation. Baconian viewpoint on quantitative relation in the research of matter quality is that the ideal science comes if mathematicization and formulization proceeds the inquiry into quality. In order to reflect this Baconian viewpoint, a group of consort experiments in Sylva Sylvarum are selected to demonstrate that Sylva Sylvarum with the sound experiments in it advocates a trend of the inquiry into the qualities of sound switched from Pythagorean tradition, and hence to show the significance of this book in the history of science to a certain extent.Finally, as for explaining the causes of motion and change, Bacon proposed his scientific explanation which he called it "the interpretation of nature". However, Baconian scientific explanation has not received adequate attention in spite of some researches concerning it. For one thing, research probing into Bacon's "the interpretation of nature" in terms of scientific explanation is new trend in the history of science with the newly introduced method of science study, sociology of science and philosophy of science. For another, it is misleading that Bacon applied form as the key notation after Aristotle in "the interpretation of nature". Bacon called his explanation as interpretation and used it as the subtitle of Novum Organum in contrast to Aristotle's anticipation of nature. Nevertheless, his adoption of Aristotle's form as the central notation of his scientific explanation leads to a false impression that he still wandered in Aristotelian framework. As a matter of fact, Bacon assigned a rather new connotation to this terminology and modified Aristotle's doctrine to accommodate more operable and convincible explanation when dealing with the causes of motion and change. For a third reason, two of the key terms in Baconian scientific explanation, latent configuration and latent process, are overlooked, even though they constitute the basic structure of his explanation doctrine. Suffice it to say that the two terms are inexplicit, only taken into consideration Novum Organum and other works. Therefore, an effort is made here to dispel the ambiguity of latent process via a group of serial experiments in Sylva Sylvarum, in order to disclose in detail the features and connotation of this term. As a result, the comprehension of Baconian interpretation of nature will be more accurate, trenchant and complete. Furthermore, with reference to the characteristics of early modern scientific explanation revolution, a fact is reveled that Baconian scientific explanation is the pioneer of this revolution.All the three types of experiments in Sylva Sylvarum embody from different angle Baconian experimentation, scientific thoughts and speculative natural philosophy, and constitute the characteristics of Sylva Sylvarum. While Novum Organum, Temporis partus masculus, The Advancement of Learning and De Augmentis theoretically and philosophically expound Bacon's scientific thoughts and methodology, Sylva Sylvarum and other natural histories as well exemplify Bacon's experimentation and thoughts via concrete experiments. Two kinds of Bacon's works compensate each other and expatiate Bacon's thoughts in terms of theory and practice.