Novum Organum

London, 1620

A first edition of Bacon's Latin Instauratio magna appeared in London in 1620, printed by the royal printer John Bill. Its second part carried the running title Novum organum.

The volume presented that second part as one stage of Bacon's planned reconstruction of knowledge, and followed it with a preliminary sketch for a third part, the Parasceve on natural and experimental history. The engraved title page, signed by Simon de Passe, shows ships passing the Pillars of Hercules.

Three tables, then twenty-seven more things to look at

The work set out Bacon's eliminative induction: observations organized into tables of presence, absence, and degree, followed by exclusions and further investigative steps.

The tables were only the opening machinery. Book II adds 27 further classes of 'prerogative instances' — and the table of absence pairs the warming rays of the Sun with the apparently non-warming rays of the Moon, so that light itself can be excluded as the form of heat.

Four idols

The same volume published Bacon's four classes of intellectual error — the Idols of the Tribe, Cave, Market, and Theatre — as obstacles investigators had to guard against.

Bacon's title deliberately answered the Organon, the collection of six logical works that ancient commentators grouped under that later name; Aristotle himself did not so title the collection.

Publication did not complete the larger Instauratio magna, most of which Bacon left unfinished.