This is somewhat off topic but -- I uploaded a copy of the book by Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum" (A New Instrument) written in 1620. It is here:
https://lenr-canr.org/Collections/Novum%20Organum.docx You may want to download a copy. Let me explain what this is and why I uploaded it. Thomas Jefferson and I consider Bacon one of the most important scientists in history, right up there with Newton. At Monticello, "Jefferson displayed portraits of the 'three greatest men that have ever lived' – John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon" ( https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/parlor/ ). I described the book many years ago, explaining how it relates to cold fusion: Bacon invented the scientific method. He was the first to proclaim the importance of experiments and the supremacy of observations over established textbook laws of physics. His understanding of science was imperfect of course. How could it be otherwise, since most of what he predicted did not come about for two hundred years? He considered science primarily inductive; he did not realize the importance of hypotheses and mathematics. What he understood was that knowledge is power and cooperative research lasting decades will lead to enormous progress and give mankind understanding of and control over nature. He understood that the major sources of error in research (what he called “idols”) are mainly caused by psychological and cultural limitations, such as our propensity to oversimplify arguments, see only what we are trained to see, and the limitations imposed by language, which may be ill chosen or inadequate to describe a new phenomenon. Terms like “cold fusion” and “host lattice” may confuse the issue because the objects they refer to, it turns out, are poorly described by the words we first selected to label them. Much of what Bacon laid out in Novum Organum is forgotten, misunderstood or overlooked by today’s working scientists. We still have a great deal to learn from him . . . Anyway, it is a magnificent book. Here is why I uploaded this copy. Bacon wrote the book in Latin. It has been translated into English several times. Look around on the internet and you will find different translations. Some are better than others. Some of them are missing several chapters, including the introduction, which is important. The copy I have is one of the better ones. It is complete. It was translated in 1831 by Basil Montagu, Esq., so the English is modern, not Elizabethan. Here is a facsimile copy: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_Francis_Bacon_Lord_Chancell/edUvAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 There are many fine quotes in this book. Here are some of my favorites. This reads as if Bacon were looking over our shoulders at researchers, the debates here, and the controversy. This might have been written yesterday. We should listen carefully to what he says. QUOTES: [His most famous aphorism, # 3, is often abbreviated “knowledge is power:”] Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect. For nature is only subdued by submission, and that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause, in practical science becomes the rule. [And in the introduction:] The empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by obeying her. [Others:] The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down, (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords,) forces every thing else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. . . . The human understanding is most excited by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then begins almost imperceptibly to conceive and suppose that every thing is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind; whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and heterogeneous instances, by which axioms are tried as by fire, unless the office be imposed upon it by severe regulations, and a powerful authority. . . . The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly: for man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; sobriety, because it limits his hope; the depths of nature, from superstition; the light of experiment, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should appear to be occupied with common and varying objects; paradoxes, from a fear of the opinion of the vulgar; in short, his feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible ways. . . . We may also derive some reason for hope from the circumstances of several actual inventions being of such a nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a conjecture about them previous to their discovery, but would rather have ridiculed them as impossible. For men are wont to guess about new subjects from those they are already acquainted with, and the hasty and vitiated fancies they have thence formed: than which there cannot be a more fallacious mode of reasoning, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels. [On excessive skepticism:] The school of Plato introduced skepticism, first, as it were, in joke and irony, from their dislike to Protagoras, Hippias, and others, who were ashamed of appearing not to doubt upon any subject. But the new academy dogmatized in their skepticism, and held it as their tenet. Although this method be more honest than arbitrary decision, (for its followers allege that they by no means confound all inquiry, like Pyrrho and his disciples, but hold doctrines which they can follow as probable, though they cannot maintain them to be true,) yet, when the human mind has once despaired of discovering truth, everything begins to languish. Hence men turn aside into pleasant controversies and discussions, and into a sort of wandering over subjects, rather than sustain any rigorous investigation. But, as we observed at first, we are not to deny the authority of the human senses and understanding, although weak; but rather to furnish them with assistance. Notes. This book is not directly related to cold fusion so I did not add it to the Library index. This version is in Microsoft Word format rather than Acrobat, to facilitate copying.
