Experimental Biology, Pure and Applied

Abstract

There are those who really believe that the purpose of science is to increase human welfare. That was the vision which inspired Francis Bacon, writing of the ‘Novum Organum’ at a time when modern science scarcely existed, and advocating a scientific procedure, which, by and large, has proved unproductive. It was the vision, also, which inspired Joseph Priestley, writing 150 years later when experimental science was really getting under way. Priestley predicted the profound effects that the new knowledge was going to have on human affairs.