Bacon’s Influence

That Bacon’s scientific works are of a very low quality is all too obvious. They are presumptuous, vulgar, full a contradictions, obscurantism and scholasticism; admittedly both his inductivism and his doctrine of prejudice are different aspects of the same myth of science manifest. Stills, his influence was a major factor in the great awakening of critical intelligence which followed his age, and the strongest factor behind the scientific research carried out by his followers. Bacon did provoke a critical attitude within the field of science. True, his demand for infallibility and his hope of avoiding all error caused much prejudice and grief. But he could not have foretold that his theory would provide such a forceful argument in favor of his myth and that Puritanism would provide such a favorable habitat for it. His influence was different before and after Newtonian mechanics won its great reputation.