Chapter Six. Novum Organum

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

FRANCIS BACON

In 1620, Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a masterwork that challenged Bacon's contemporaries to discard their ancient reliance on pure deductive reasoning and embrace a scientific method based on observation and experience. He imagined a new world of culture and leisure that could be gained by inquiry into the laws and processes of nature. In describing this world, he anticipated the effects of advances in science, engineering, and technology.

Bacon's scientific method consisted of three steps:

1. Purge your mind of prejudices what Bacon called "superstition."

2. Collect observations and experiences systematically.

3. Stop, survey what you have seen, and draw initial conclusions (the "first vintage").

Novum Organum was part of a larger work called Instauratio Magna, which set out to organize the sciences, define a method of scientific inquiry, collect observations and facts, present examples of the new method, and define a new philosophy based on the results of this scientific work. This work so influenced modern scientific methods that Bacon is often called the Father of Modern Science.

The title page of Instauratio Magna contained an image of a ship passing through the Pillars of Hercules (Figure 6-1). The Pillars of Hercules were generally accepted to have stood on the sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, the sole passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. For the ancients, the Pillars of Hercules symbolized the limits of possible human exploration. Beyond the pillars lay the edge of the earth; the ancients had not been inclined to progress into those outer reaches and leave the old world behind.

Figure 6-1. This is the title page from Bacon's Instauratio Magna, which contains his Novum Organum. The ancients were reluctant to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

At this time, average software development practices are becalmed in a windless sea of code-and-fix programming a kind of flat earth approach to software development that was proved ineffective 20 years ago. Leading software engineers have a clear idea of what lies beyond software's Pillars of Hercules software engineering has already had its Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan who have explored the new world of better software engineering practices. As Chapter 12 will describe, vast software riches await in waters that have been charted extensively but are traveled infrequently by average software practitioners.