Anyone who has trained as a scientist has learned about the “scientific method” – but the concept remains ill-defined and its origins are a topic of debate among philosophers and historians.
In this week’s installment of In Our Time on BBC Radio 4, Melvyn Bragg and his cabal of intellectuals discuss the role of the English polymath Francis Bacon (1561–1626) in the development of the method. Through writings such as Novum Organum Scientiarum, Bacon (right) championed the use of inductive reasoning in science. Indeed, Bacon had a very important influence on a future generation of scientists who founded the Royal Society in
1660.
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