| universal, that is, essential. Now,
| Bacon asks, how does the mind acquire
| the knowledge of these primary
| truths, since, as it is allowed by
| Aristotle himself, all knowledge
| starts with experience, which
| experience is always contingent and
| particular? How does the mind go from
| the empirical knowledge of facts or
| sensible effects (phenomena) to the
| knowledge of the very nature of
| things? The formal necessity of the
| syllogism (or deductive reasoning)
| makes the old logic forget the pre-
| judicial question of how we set up
| first principles. Therefore, any
| attempt to define the valid form of
| theories must go through the inquiry
| upon how we establish truth.
|
| From this general critique, it is
| easy to understand Bacon's various
| comments on the old organon. First,
| since such a logic induces a kind of
| double start, the empirical one and
| the rational one, and since it
| confuses the origin of knowledge with
| its foundation, the mind is condemned
| to jump immediately from empirical
| particulars to first principles (or