Francis Bacon Quotes

When we human beings hypothesize that a law of nature holds - even temporarily or situationally - we are creating an idea, but we are also making a hypothesis about how nature behaves, whose truth or usefulness has nothing to do with what we know or believe.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.

We need only reflect on what has been prov'd at large, that we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects, and that 'tis only by our experience of their constant conjunction, we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation.

Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.

To know truly is to know by causes.

It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.

The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.

A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate...is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.

In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.

I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.