THE BIRTH OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: RARE FIRST EDITION OF FRANCIS BACON'S NOVUM ORGANUM, 1620

BACON, Francis. Novum Organum. London: John Bill, 1620. Folio, contemporary sprinkled calf skillfully rebacked and recornered.

First edition of Bacon's Novum Organum (a "new instrument" to replace the old Organon of Aristotle), which had a revolutionary impact on early modern science by laying the foundation of the inductive method.

Bacon's "insistence on making science experimental and factual, rather than speculative and philosophical, had powerful consequences. He saw clearly the limitations of Aristotelian and scholastic methods and the growing breach between the thinking of his time and that of the Middle Ages is more precisely formulated than in that of, say, Tommaso Campanella or Giordano Bruno. As a philosopher Bacon's influence on Locke and through him on subsequent English schools of psychology and ethics was profound. Leibniz, Huygens and particularly Robert Boyle were deeply indebted to him, as were the Encyclopédistes, and Voltaire, who called him 'le père de la philosophie experimentale" (PMM). Bacon planned a magnum opus titled Instauratio Magna in six parts, of which he completed only two. This, the Novum Organum, which has remained his most influential work, was intended to be the second part; the first part was not completed until 1623 as De Augmentis Scientiarum, a greatly extended version of his 1605 Advancement of Learning. Thus the Novum Organum’s famous allegorical title page—with its evocative engraving of a ship in full sail passing through the Pillars of Hercules—refers to the work as the Instauratio Magna. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society were soon to be filled with exactly the kind of "Histories", careful collections of experimental data, that Bacon here recommends. As usual, this copy is the second state, with leaf e3 cancelled and reprinted on e4 with errata added and only the name of the printer Bill present. Text in Latin. Gibson 103b. Grolier/Horblit 8b (1st issue). Norman I:98. PMM 119. Ownership inscription at head of title; 18th-century manuscript notes on both sides of the initial blank; some underlining and marginal marks in the preface. From the library of the Irish classical scholar John Walker (17691833), with his ownership inscription at the head of the engraved title "John Walker, T.C.D." (retrospectively dated 1815), and with his manuscript notes in Latin about the book on both sides of the initial blank leaf. Walker entered Trinity College, Dublin, in January 1786, ascending by stages to Bachelor of Divinity in 1800. Inspired by the practice of the apostles and rejecting all later developments in church authority, Walker founded a group called the Church of God (his followers were known pejoratively as Separatists or Walkerites). Knowing this to be incompatible with his status as a Church of Ireland clergyman, Walker offered to resign his fellowship of Trinity but was instead expelled. He was then forced to support himself by lecturing and writing until the last year of his life, when Trinity College, Dublin, granted him a pension in amends for their earlier treatment of him.

Very infrequent scattered light foxing, with occasional marginal pinpoint wormholing, not affecting readability. Age-wear to contemporary calf boards, with a few cuts, wormholes on rear board. A desirable copy in very good condition of this landmark.