Sir Francis Bacon on Doubts, Patience, and Certainties

Found in: The Advancement of Learning

This quote is from Francis Bacon’s 1605 work, The Advancement of Learning, considered by some to be the first important philosophical work in the English language.

Education

Another error is, an impatience of doubting and a blind hurry of asserting without a mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are like the two ways of action so frequently mentioned by the ancients; the one plain and easy at first, but in the end impassable; the other rough and fatiguing in the entrance, but soon after fair and even: so in contemplation, if we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties. (FROM: ON THE DIGNITY AND ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, FIRST BOOK)

Thoughts

Among other important contributions, it outlines a taxonomy of all human knowledge, which was subsequently the basis of the “Système figuré des connaissances humaines;” the organizational principle of the famous Encyclopédie. The book is foundational in Bacon’s subsequent development of an empirical theory of science, and indeed, of all knowledge. As we see from this quote, knowledge comes ultimately from doubts (i.e., hypotheses) and in the careful, “patient,” testing of them (i.e., experimentation) we derive knowledge.

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