Editing Baconian method (section)

==Natural history==
The ''[[Natural History (Pliny)|Natural History]]'' of [[Pliny the Elder]] was a classical Roman encyclopedia work. Induction, for Bacon's followers, meant a type of rigour applied to factual matters. Reasoning should not be applied in plain fashion to just any collection of examples, an approach identified as "Plinian". In considering natural facts, a fuller survey was required to form a basis for going further.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pomata |first1=Gianna |last2=Siraisi |first2=Nancy G. |title=Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TqT_od-UHNQC&pg=PA113 |year=2005 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-16229-6 |page=113}}</ref> Bacon made it clear he was looking for more than "a botany" with discursive accretions.<ref>{{cite book |last=von Linné |first=Carl |title=Nemesis Divina |others=Edited and Translated with Explanatory Notes by M. J. Petry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QQ8cs4kOBlAC&pg=PA45 |date=31 May 2001 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-7923-6820-5 |page=45}}</ref>

In concrete terms, the [[cabinet of curiosities]], exemplifying the Plinian approach, was to be upgraded from a source of wonderment to a challenge to science.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ewalt |first=Margaret R. |title=Peripheral Wonders: Nature, Knowledge, and Enlightenment in the Eighteenth-century Orinoco |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NNXJuxJ2YhoC&pg=PA128 |year=2008 |publisher=Associated University Presse |isbn=978-0-8387-5689-8 |page=128}}</ref> The main source in Bacon's works for the approach was his ''Sylva Sylvarum'', and it suggested a more systematic collection of data in the search for causal explanations.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Cantor |first1=G. N. |last2=Christie |first2=J. R. R. |last3=Hodge |first3=M. J. S. |last4=Olby |first4=R. C. |title=Companion to the History of Modern Science |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkJn6ciwYZsC&pg=PT260 |date=6 August 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-97751-2 |page=260}}</ref>

Underlying the method, as applied in this context, are therefore the "tables of natural history" and the ways in which they are to be constructed. Bacon's background in the [[common law]] has been proposed as a source for this concept of investigation.<ref>{{cite book|last=Radman |first=Zdravko |title=From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkyHM283PocC&pg=PA28 |date=1 January 1995 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |isbn=978-3-11-014554-0 |page=28}}</ref>

As a general intellectual programme, Bacon's ideas on "natural history" have been seen as a broad influence on British writers later in the 17th century, in particular in economic thought and within the [[Royal Society]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Wilbur Applebaum|title=Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ecl7RgaO6acC&pg=PA110|date=29 June 2000|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-203-80186-4|page=110}}</ref>