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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
The epoch-making discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler shattered the foundation of the time-honoured religious philosophy, and the mctaphysical outlook of Universe and life. It was found that observation of natural phenomena without any preconceived notion led to conclusions which upset the celestial and terrestrial order sanctioned by religious theory. A philosophical revolution took place. A radical change in the cutlook on the problems of the Universe, life, history and society became inevitable. That change was a condition for the great political revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which ushered in the marvellous era of modern civilisation.
The definite inauguration of a new philosophy on the basis of experimental science and the inductive method of reasoning, is associated with the names of Francis Bacon and Descartes. It will be interesting and instructive to recollect Bacon's characterisation of the old orthodox method that he set out to combat, and enunciation of the new he advocated. “Whence can arise such vagueness and sterility in all the physical systems which have hitherto existed in the world? It is not certainly from anything in nature itself; for the steadiness and regularity of the laws by which it is governed clearly mark them out as objects of certain and precise knowledge. It can therefore arise from nothing else but the perverseness and insufficiency 274
