The Experimental Philosophy or Francis Bacon’s Elenchus

Critical rationalism faces difficulty in Karl Popper’s Socratic formulation: “I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by an effort, we may find the truth.” But the Socratic elenchus, using refutations, can only give us negative knowledge of general principles, which is not the wisdom we seek. Affirmatively, we can only find a collection of opinions to be coherent, which is one of many. Francis Bacon proposed an improved elenchus to find general truths. You must take up a limited topic to study, then cross-examine your evidence for and against its apparent nature. Experiments contrary to evidence and presumed knowledge are entered as self-contradictions in tables of opposition recorded in an “experimental and natural history.” Such an account highlights a challenging puzzle if the account is to be made coherent. With enough problematized evidence, a coherent reading, or a solution of the puzzle, will be unique. Being both coherent and unique, it will be the truth about that limited reality being investigated. Unlike the method of hypothesis (“Anticipating Nature”), deciphering a coherent model is “Interpreting Nature,” allowing us to find a general truth on a limited topic. Isaac Newton achieved great success using Robert Boyle’s mechanistic version of this method. Using the “experimental philosophy,” he discovered general principles of optics and astronomy.