Page 20 - FEN1(2)C01 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH PAPER I: From Chaucer to the Present

Analysis:
As Bacon was growing up, it was customary for teachers to use
the Scholastic or Aristotelian method to learn. This style is
taught by deduction, that is by syllogistic reasoning. Public
schools as we now know them simply did not exist. Nearly all
learning was church oriented; thus, all subjects were taught
from a theological viewpoint. The style, methodology, and
vocabulary of Plato and Aristotle were commonplaces. It did
not take long for the young Bacon to rebel against what he
saw as the heavy-handed and increasingly obsolete practices
of the Scholastics. As he matured, Bacon began to use the
inductive method of reasoning, that is going from
experimentation to general principles. His writings began to
show a disdain for the deductive or Scholastic style of thought.
In “Of Studies,” Bacon uses studies to poke holes in the
theories of the Scholastics, who often took the word of an
accepted Previous Grand Master that such and such was
correct in all its implications. He notes that an over-reliance on
studies will atrophy the ability of one to think creatively: “To
make judgments wholly by their (studies) rules is the humour
of a scholar." He further writes of the dangers involved in
accepting as dogma any statement that has not been verified
by strict experimentation: Studies “teach not their own use,
but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by
observation." He concludes with a sharp slap at what he saw
as the inability of the Scholastics to draw subtle and nuanced
differences between related phenomena: “If his wit be not apt
to distinguish or find differences, let him study the
schoolmen." Ironically, though Bacon savages the Scholastics,
he nevertheless uses their preferred Latinate quotes and
aphorisms to do so.
Martin Asiner, Essex County Vocational Schools Newark Tech
Quora.com