The interpretation of the mind and the anticipation of nature in Bacon’s «Novum Organum»

Abstract

The F. Bacon’s work “Novum Organum” contains a certain amount of terminological inaccuracies and some of them should be considered closely. Some terms mentioned in this work are defi ned insuffi ciently or not defi ned at all, therefore they have several meanings which cannot be reduced to each other. It’s necessary to fi nd different meanings of such concepts as “nature”, “mind”, “understanding”, “reasoning” and to reveal their positive and precise content. The meanings of these concepts will be discovered in the text of Th e Novum Organum by method explained in this work. By consistent realization of F. Bacon’s method and by drawing up tables of presence, absence and degrees, we will proceed to gathering the results and we will discover three natures. First one is the nature which develops and offers the method. Second nature is considered wrong and therefore should be eliminated. Th ird nature should imply the method; its task is to eliminate the second one or to keep the second nature out of the active actions. There is no doubt that all these three natures are closely connected, but they are not identical. Their connection is carried out within the wrong nature, which is analyzed in the most well-known passages from Th e Novum Organum about four types of idles. Eventually, it will be clear that F. Bacon, who understood perfectly his main task of describing and demonstrating a new method, has unconsciously come to the origins of absolutely new issue. This issue is the subject of thinking which subsequently will be the main concern of Modern philosophers. Also, the article shows the insufficiency of induction method for considering the nature of this new object of philosophy. Refs 4.