ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to place the topics of scientific discovery and experiment in a certain historical context, and to interpret them in terms of apprehensive reason. The ambit of scientific method at its inception was nothing less than discovering the truth through the use of rules, enabling inquiry to circumvent the importance of the inquirer. When method supplanted virtue in the early modern philosophical imagination, it was of a piece with the mass publication of the Christian Bible: both promised everyman an unmediated access to the truth and both threatened to undermine traditional authorities. Roger Bacon held that the experiments of natural magic could result in such benefits as reforming the calendar, transmuting metals and extending life. Experimentation is a practice of inquiry which aims to reveal hidden properties by the manipulation of nature. Clearly teleological in nature, experimental practice nevertheless need not be driven by more theoretical concerns.
