In general...

In general, and as Rossi states, many have seen in Bacon the constructor of a gigantic ‘logic machine’ doomed to not being used. With the Baconian method, according to Spedding, we cannot do anything. We consider it a subtle, elaborate and ingenious mechanism, but one which can produce nothing[^12] .

In spite of everything, Bacon’s image as the founder of the new science thanks to his discovery of the inductive method was greatly appreciated by the founders of the Royal Society and the authors of the great illustrated Encyclopædia . In what situation do we place the practical with regard to rationality when the first value is certainty?

Many modern thinkers begin their writings with the observation of the disappointing state of the philosophy of human things in comparison with natural philosophy, that is the natural science. Dissension and lack of certainty, both in metaphysics and in moral philosophy, are the points causing the greatest unrest.

Both Descartes and Hume, to mention two of the most noteworthy, feel that the model that inquiry into mankind should follow is that of natural and formal sciences, which have already opened up a path, a method to certainty and consensus. So, Descartes set out to find ‘the highest and most perfect moral science, which, presupposing a knowledge of other sciences, is the ultimate degree of wisdom’[^13] . Naturally, Descartes had to settle indefinitely for what he called ‘provisional morals’.

Hume stated with his empiricist approach base on the inductive method, ‘Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension’[^14] . This science will imply the extension of the principles of Newtonian natural philosophy to the study of human nature, and within it to the study of morals.

Regarding politics, Hume has still fewer doubts, and states categorically that it can be reduced to a science endowed with a degree of certainty almost as perfect as that of mathematics[^15] .

But this naturalist approach to the study of man, which in principle promises the so longed-for certainty, leads to further disappointments and carries with it the germ of its own destruction, in the long term threatening natural science itself, which will always be an activity and product of human freedom and reason.