The New Organon

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Core Ideas

The Attack on Aristotle

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Core Ideas The Attack on Aristotle

The importance of Aristotle in medieval and early modern intellectual life cannot be underestimated. His works on a wide range of subjects formed the staple of university curricula, and numerous authors approached natural philosophy through his theories. Bacon attempted to end this dominance; he viewed Aristotle as fundamentally wrong and criticized Aristotle's theories from their logical foundations upwards.

Bacon argued that Aristotle needlessly complicated nature by his "dialectics" and distinctions; Aristotelian terminology was more concerned with defending a position in a subtle way than with discovering the truth. Bacon replaced Aristotle's syllogism with induction in his epistemology and cited Aristotle's work as an example of the Idols of the theater that obstruct rational inquiry. Bacon was by no means the first anti-Aristotelian author—Paracelsus, Ramus, Telesio and Galileo opposed him on various grounds—but he is among the most strident anti-Aristotelians.

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