Francis Bacon formulated the scientific method from direct observation of engineers such as Cornelis Drebbel and Salomon de Caus, as recorded in Novum Organum (1620) and New Atlantis (1627).

Drebbel constructed an underwater boat tested iteratively on the Thames with air-supply tubes and chemical replenishment by 1620; de Caus documented hydraulic engines, automata, and acoustic devices in Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes (1615). Bacon cited printing, gunpowder, and the compass as proof that material inventions advance knowledge more than abstract debate (Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620; IEEE Spectrum, 2024). Salomon’s House mirrors these workshops with caves for refrigeration, sound-houses, and engine-houses staffed by Interpreters of Nature.

Bacon died in April 1626 after packing a chicken with snow in an empirical preservation trial documented in contemporary letters. Primary sources show his insistence that knowledge emerges only by probing nature through tools and constraints. This cycle appears in King et al., Science (2009), where the Robot Scientist Adam autonomously generated hypotheses, ran closed-loop microbial experiments, and revised models without human intervention.

Subsequent autonomous laboratories cited in Nature (2023) apply Bacon’s compile-interpret-test sequence at scale for materials and pharmacology, directly extending the empirical framework first codified in Novum Organum.