MODERN science is wont to trace back its inception to Francis Bacon and his great work, "Instauratio Magna." He was the occasion rather than the cause of the change in thought that took place, for no great reorganization in the mental world comes suddenly or at the instigation of an individual. The individual is the focus of the general unrest, the avenue for the expression of the revolution going on in the universal consciousness So it was with Bacon. He was the able mouthpiece for the general dissatisfaction with the outworn scholastic dogmatism. Men's minds were looking for new fields of activity and for more reliable bases for reason. Bacon indicated the direction this new activity was to take and gave for the foundation-stone experience of the external world. Men must be receptive merely. "All depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are, for God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world" (Preface to Instauratio Magna). The wonderful universe must be treated reverently in his scheme of induction, "the ascent from particulars to generals" (Century Dictionary). Its opposite, the deductive method, or "descent from generals to particulars" hardly existed for him.
To-day modern science has found it impossible to abide by all that Bacon's method would involve. It has been found necessary to mingle the two, always giving induction the first place. The modern method consists in a preliminary critical induction, followed by the framing of a working hypothesis," to be tested later by experimentation and verification. But your premise in every case must be experience, not sheer inference. "Before deductive interpretation of the general truths, there must be some inductive establishment of them" (Herbert Spencer. Principles of Sociology) .
To-day this habit of building all conclusions on external evidence has become so ingrained that it rarely occurs to any one that there is any other legitimate mental method. Whenever a man or woman is found who is convinced of the advisability of changing from the inductive to a purely deductive process, the struggle is usually a mighty one. Lifelong habits of thought have to be pulled up by the roots, and the roots usually go down to the very foundations of the mental life.
