The provisional character of natural history was emphasized by Bacon at every step: both in his more methodological writings describing how such a natural history is to be assembled 6 and in his topical Latin natural histories written between 16. 3 It was described as a cooperative and cumulative large-scale enterprise requiring ‘an army of workers’ 4 and designed on the ‘measure of the universe.’ 5 The product of such cumulative efforts was a tentative and provisional set of results, facts, experiments, experimental techniques, observations, questions and rules of research belonging to the whole community of researchers and accessible, in principle, to all. 2 Moreover, while natural philosophy or other branches of knowledge require preliminary training and are accessible only to a handful of people, this natural history was a field open-in principle-to everyone. Such is for example the opening claim of Historia naturalis and experimentalis (1622), stating that with a sufficiently large natural historical data-base, science can proceed even if the method of interpretatio naturae is not yet perfected. In a number of methodological writings, Bacon claimed that natural history is both necessary and sufficient for constructing some sound knowledge of the natural world. Under one form or another, however, natural history was crucial for any kind of natural philosophical enterprise. Natural history meant both an introductory general survey of the natural world and a more advanced experimental study of qualities, virtues and appetites of matter. 1 Although always a core element in the Baconian programme, the notion of natural history had a fluctuating meaning: it meant simply a large repository of facts and data for the use of inductio, as well as a more theoretical topical construction of experiments, observations, questions, suggestions for further experimentation, rules and sometimes even axioms, destined to provide the basis of a never fully explained process of interpretatio naturae. 8 Parasceve, appended at the end of NO, 1620, but also Norma Historiae praesentis published in the Hi (.)ġIn the last five years of his life, Bacon was actively engaged in a process of re-fashioning his natural philosophical project around a redesigned notion of natural history.7 OFB, XII, p. 12 is referring to natural histories as the “timber and material” ( Sylva et Materia).6 Examples can be found in Parasceve, in the preface to Historia naturalis et experimentalis (1622), (.).2 “ For once a faithful and abundant history of nature and the arts has been collected and arranged, a (.).1 See G. Rees, “An Unpublished Manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva Sylvarum drafts and other working n (.).
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