"What was a question once is a question still, and instead of being resolved by discussion is only fixed and fed; and all the tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters and scholars, not of inventors and those who bring to further perfection the things invented. In the mechanical arts we do not find it so; they, on the contrary, as having in them some breath of life, are continually growing and becoming more perfect. As originally invented they are commonly rude, clumsy, and shapeless; afterwards they acquire new powers and more commodious arrangements and constructions... Philosophy and the intellectual sciences, on the contrary, stand like statues, worshipped and celebrated, but not moved or advanced."
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The Great Instauration
The Great Instauration (Instauratio Magna), by Francis Bacon, was published in 1620 and describes his plan for the instauration of the arts and sciences. This work precedes and contains his Novum Organum, or New Organon, as a second part. The third part was never completed and is known as the Preparative Towards a Natural and Experimental History. The De parascevis ad inquisitionem was to set forth the character of this Natural and Experimental History.
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