Roger Bacon's views on what was wrong and on what needed to be done didn't fit together. In describing sources of error, bad influences predominated. But the path to truth is through the application of scientific method.

There is a gap here which we have to fill in for ourselves. We must first be influenced by his critique not to follow either fashion or authority, but to enquire into the truth using our own resources. Then we may adopt the experimental method he describes for that purpose.

If this caricature of Bacon wasn't unrealistic in his day it certainly is now. However great we may think the problems with accepted authority, or with the institutions which shape our perception of the world, we can't ignore them and come to out own views.

There are then at least two distinct kinds of ailment to be diagnosed here. One concerns the accepted methods of arriving at "the truth" in various domains. The other concerns the ways in which these methods, good or bad, are subverted by human nature and our social institutions.

A century ago the primary source of bad philosophy was thought by positivists to be metaphysics, and the solution was thought to be to confine philosophy to an appropriate kind of analysis. By mid century positivism was falling into decline, and the character of analysis changed radically. Most importantly, the change was from making meaning clear, possibly by adopting new language, to understanding language as it is.

The predominant interest of metaphysical