| argues that Aristotle's mistake
| affects the syllogistic form. In the
| fourth chapter of the fifth book of
| the DE AUGMENTIS, Bacon develops a
| remarkable critique of the syllogism
| and is partly responsible for the
| widespread disregard of formal logic
| in the seventeenth and eighteenth
| centuries.
|
| According to Bacon, "in all
| inductions, whether in good or
| vicious form the same action of the
| mind which inventeth, judgeth" (III,
| 392). One cannot find without
| proving, nor prove without finding.
| But this is not the case in the
| syllogism: "for the proof being not
| immediate but by mean, the invention
| of the mean is one thing, and the
| judgement of the consequence is
| another, the one exciting only, the
| other examining" (III, 392). The
| syllogism needs the means (the middle
| term) so that the derived conclusion
| amounts to a proof. But since the
| syllogism is incapable of inventing
| the middle term, it must have been
| known before. In other words,
| syllogistic form leaves the invention