Baconian Method - Followers

Followers

The English physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82) was one of the earliest scientists to adhere to the scientific empiricism of the Baconian method. His encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–76) includes numerous examples of Baconian investigative methodology; its preface even paraphrases lines from Bacon's essay On Truth from his 1605 work The Advancement of Learning. Isaac Newton was a noted Baconian—his famous quote hypotheses non fingo (I don't frame hypotheses) was featured in later editions of the Principia, demonstrating his preference for rules that could be demonstrated by formal proof, as opposed to unevidenced hypotheses.

The Baconian method was further developed and promoted by English philosopher John Stuart Mill. His 1843 book, A System of Logic, was an effort to shed further light on issues of causation. In this work, he formulated the five principles of inductive reasoning now known as Mill's methods.

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