Claimed by Francis Bacon
Serves 8 · 2 of 6 items checked · 4 aisles
Produce
- Checked by Galileo Galilei
Meat & Poultry
Spices & Seasoning
Other
- Checked by Francis Bacon
Gathering
A supper for the new philosophy
1620 · London, England
Bacon gathers Galileo and Kepler to test his argument that knowledge must be built from experiment rather than ancient authority.
Bacon's London lodgings are crowded with instruments, specimens, and unfinished manuscripts, and he has invited two men whose work he reads with more attention than he admits. Galileo has come north with a small telescope and news of the moons of Jupiter; Kepler has brought tables of planetary positions and a temperament as mystical as Bacon's is practical.
The evening turns on a single question: how should a natural philosopher proceed? Bacon wants a patient induction from particulars, and he distrusts Kepler's search for harmonies and Galileo's preference for mathematical demonstration. The two guests defend their methods with examples, and Bacon, who enjoys an argument more than an agreement, is well satisfied. The dishes are plain English: a goose, a pottage, and bread, with spiced wine to close.
The table
Host: Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei — Astronomer and mathematician, lately the most talked-about man in Italy.
Johannes Kepler — Imperial mathematician at Linz and a tireless correspondent.
The menu
Everything you need to host this menu, sorted aisle by aisle:
The menu
12 of 37 items checked
Claimed by Galileo Galilei
Serves 6 · 3 of 8 items checked · 5 aisles
Claimed by Johannes Kepler
Serves 8 · 2 of 7 items checked · 3 aisles
Claimed by Francis Bacon
Makes 2 loaves · 2 of 5 items checked · 5 aisles
Claimed by Galileo Galilei
Serves 8 · 2 of 6 items checked · 5 aisles
Claimed by Johannes Kepler
Serves 12 · 1 of 5 items checked · 3 aisles
The conversation
Francis Bacon
You have both looked through the glass and seen what the schoolmen would not. Tell me plainly — what did the instrument show you?
Galileo Galilei
That the moon is not smooth, and that Jupiter keeps four moons of its own. The heavens are not a perfect sphere, whatever the philosophers say.
Johannes Kepler
And that the planets do not move in circles but in ellipses. I have the numbers for it; the orbit of Mars would admit no other shape.
Francis Bacon
Numbers and instruments together — that is the marriage I want. Not authority, not syllogism, but the thing itself, questioned properly.
Johannes Kepler
Then let us question it slowly. A single observation can lie; a thousand, arranged, cannot.
A reconstruction — imagined from the figures' own writings.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.