ABSTRACT
Francis Bacon is the philosopher who has often been placed, as one who foresaw the future eminence of natural science. The simple picture of Bacon as the methodological forerunner of industrial science has been treated with considerable scepticism in recent times, not least because the description of the science which Bacon presumptively pioneered seems, if anything, more suited to the nineteenth century than to the seventeenth century. The scientific method of the seventeenth century cannot be traced to a single origin. The attitude to nature of the seventeenth-century scientists-especially their almost uniform tendency towards a mechanistic philosophy-was not strictly part of their scientific method; but can this be discussed except in connection with the idea of nature. The kinematic or as it is more usually termed mechanical philosophy of Descartes constitutes the core and character of scientific innovation for the second half of the seventeenth century, indeed until it was put down by the rising authority of Newton.
