Bacon's Inductive Method

Bacon s adaptation of traditional methods was to begin with observation of discrete facts, and then from observed similarities in many separate events, to arrive at generalizations—and thus he formulated his inductive method. This method ofinduction enabled him to derive rational generalizations from his observations of disparate facts. Bacon's method was influential in the development of modern science, which was already in the process of development during his life-time.

Bacon did not disparage reason; he did insist, however, that reason was a second step, to be utilized in organization and analysis only after the facts had been carefully observed. In one of his essays Bacon draws an interesting analogy between types of thinking and the activity of insects. He compares the rationalistic thinker who uses pure reason as a means of arriving at truth to the spider who spins her web from material extruded from her own body. The extreme sensationalist who randomly accumulates facts and who fails to apply reason to organize and analyze, and to derive meanings from the facts, he compares to the ant which busily scampers about, collecting and indiscriminately storing heaps of miscellaneous materials. His ow method he saw as comparable to the operations ofthe bee, which collects pollen and nectar, and then digests and modifies the collected stuff in order to make it yield its hiddeft treasure.