As we have seen in Bacon's writings, empiricism was the "new learning" of the Renaissance that more traditional people like the poet and priest John Donne thought "called all in doubt." As still exists in our time, there was a tension between people adhering to the "old" views of nature and life--derived from religion, and from the writings of the classical philosophers, especially Aristotle--and the "new learning" expounded by such writers as Bacon (try this link to learn more about him) and such practicing natural philosophers such as Robert Hooke (another Hooke link) of Oxford, author of Micrographia (1665),a treatise of observations of nature and animals through a microscope, pages of which you'll see below. A "competing" example of natural history can be seen in the two famous books by Edward Topsell, The History of Serpents (1608) and The History of Foure-footed Beasts (1607). Below are the title pages of Hooke's and the second of Topsell's works. Read both title pages carefully. What does the wording of the title pages reveal about the differences in approaches and values of the two "natural philosophers"?
Hey, don't worry. It's only your little brother in the mouth of the Boas! Well, did you see that Hooke's title page promises empirical descriptions gleaned through observation of actual creatures and things (note the Latin, too....even scientists then were educated in the Greek and Latin classical authors)? And what does Topsell promise? He's going to tell us the "Divine, Naturall, and Morall descriptions...with...their deepe hatred to Mankind, and the wonderuoll worke of God in their Creation, and Destruction." Where--to use Bacon's terminology in one of the pieces you read above--Hooke "begins in doubts" (i.e. starting by simple observations with no a priori [preconceived] notions of what he'll find, the more traditional Topsell begins "with certainties," with his a priori belief in God, with his assumptions that animals will have anthropomorphic characteristics (moral qualities, divine descriptions, and hatred of mankind), etc. Notice also that Topsell's sources (at the bottom of the page) are books, "authorities," and not observations of actual creatures. Hence, the Boas! Have you seen one lately at the zoo?