Definition
Experientia literata, the literate, or learned experience is Francis Bacon’s proposed title for a discipline that would regulate and organize the field of experience, while also training the mind of the inquirer to see further in the labyrinth of nature. He calls it an “art of discovery, or direction” (ars quaedam indicia et directionis) (Bacon 1640: 225, 1858a: 622). More precisely, experientia literata is one of the two branches of this art of discovery; the other branch is what Bacon calls the novum organum (“Francis Bacon’s Art of Discovery”). One thing experientia literatacan do, according to Bacon, is to transform the untrained, “blind” and “stupid” “mere experience” into well-designed and well-ordered series of experiments. As a result, by using this art, the experimenter obtains better and more reliable inquiries, well-organized natural and experimental histories, as well as better training and more knowledge. This, at least, is the theory. Like many of Bacon’s...
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Jalobeanu, D. (2022). Experientia Literata (Literate or Learned Experience). In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31069-5_58
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