Novum Organum

MY VERSIONS OF NOVUM ORGANUM (ارغنون نو)

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Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620) is often seen as a major milestone in the history of the philosophy of science. Figures of the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) had already begun to break away from the intellectual frameworks that had dominated the Middle Ages, particularly those endorsed by the Catholic Church. However, it was Bacon who provided a systematic critique of the Aristotelian model of deductive reasoning that underpinned scholastic thought. In its place, he proposed a new method of inquiry grounded in observation, experimentation, and inductive reasoning.

Although Bacon’s method is distinct from Plato’s, I believe there is a meaningful philosophical parallel between his conception of inductive science and the first part of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In that allegory, prisoners mistake shadows on the wall for reality, just as Bacon believed the human mind often mistakes illusions — the “idols” of tradition, language, and false authority — for knowledge. The task of the thinker is to escape this mental confinement and gradually approach “truth”1.

This idea finds a modern expression in the work of R. A. Fisher and the foundations of modern frequentist statistics. In frequentist statistical science, it is acknowledged that “truth” — for example, the full nature of a biological population such as “sheep” or “iris” — exists in principle but cannot be observed directly, since it is impossible to examine every instance that has ever existed or will exist. Instead, repeated sampling and statistical inference are used to approximate that “truth”. This is, in a sense, like observing the shadows of a chair again and again until its shape gradually becomes more intelligible — somewhat analogous to the prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Bacon’s inductive method and Fisher’s statistical logic, though separated by centuries and differing in form, both embody a shared commitment: to move from the uncertain and fragmentary toward a clearer understanding of the world, not through abstract speculation, but through disciplined, empirical engagement.

1 Here, the term “truth” is used in its general — and perhaps philosophical — sense, not to a metaphysically fixed or observable entity.

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My interest in Bacon started after reading an excerpt from Bacon’s Novum Organum in 1991 during a short course on Philosophy of Science at the beginning of my PhD studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The teacher, Professor Emeritus Jan Odelstad (an Associate Professor in 1991), was an excellent teacher and a master in describing the intellectual milieu of different periods so that the emergence of new ideas, such as Bacon’s ideas, seemed obvious. Further, after describing a new idea, you could also look forward to seeing the emergence of many more new ideas.

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Translating Novum Organum to Farsi (Persian)

Recently (November 2024), I realized that Bacon’s Novum Organum had not been fully translated into Farsi (Persian). The only translation in Farsi is by Mahmood Sanaee (محمود صناعی), probably from the 1960s, which covers only 121 of the 130 Aphorisms of Book I of Novum Organum. Sanaee gives no information about why he had omitted nine Aphorisms, and his explanation for not translating Book II of Novum Organum is very sketchy! He had used an excerpt of Novum Organum from “Commins & Linscott’s (1954) The Philosophers of Science.” Seeing Sanaee’s translation, I felt I must translate Novum Organum into Farsi.

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A new version of Novum Organum?

While searching for a suitable version for translation, I found several old, annotated versions of Novum Organum. However, the newer versions are either incomplete (e.g., Bennett’s 2017 annotated translation, see below) or not annotated (e.g., Jardine and Silverthorne’s translation from 2000). Therefore, preparing an updated and newly annotated version of Novum Organum seemed prudent.

The following is a list of versions/translations that I am using:

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Spedding et al. (1857 – 1863)

James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath have prepared a collection of Bacon’s works, extensively annotated and translated during the 1850s and 1860s. These are available through Cambridge University Press. Because these books are not covered by the “Copyright” agreements/laws, they are also available at “The Latin Library”, and “The Internet Archive”. Many web-based libraries (including many university libraries) have poor-quality scanned versions available for downloading.

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Fowler (1878, 1889)

For some reasons that I do not need to dwell upon here (including the untimely and unexpected death of Robert Leslie Ellis), a new annotated version of Novum organum has been prepared by Thomas Fowler in 1878 with even more extensive annotations than  Spedding et al.’s Version. In the second edition of his book (1889), Fowler has commented exhaustively on Novum Organum. Fowler’s work is not copyright-protected and can be found, among other places, on “The Internet Archive”.

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Devey / Gutenberg (1902)

Joseph Devey translated the Novum Organum anew in 1902 (if I am not mistaken). Devey had commented extensively on the text of Novum Organum. This is the Novum Organum version reproduced in “Great Books of the Western World” (without extensive annotations) published by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. in 1952. This is the first complete version of Novum Organum that I have read. Devey’s work is not copyright-protected and is included in the Project Gutenberg’s collection.

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Jardine & Silverthorne (2000)

Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne also have a new translation of Novum Organum published by Cambridge University Press in 2000. This version is not as extensively annotated as the previous versions mentioned above. However, the language is more suitable for the contemporary readers. This book is copyright-protected, and not freely available.

THIS BOOK IS COPYRIGHT PROTECTED. I CANNOT PLACE ANY COPY OF IT HERE.

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Bennet (2017)

The late Jonathan Bennett’s new translation of Novum Organum (2017) is a genuinely innovative way of translating Novum Organum. This is not just a good translation, but also a version that Bacon could have written if he had a good editor. Bennett has added explanatory text to Bacon’s sentences and paragraphs so that reading Novum Organum becomes a delight. Bennett’s work is Copyright-protected, but freely available, under certain conditions, in different formats from his site “Early Modern Texts.”

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION