Bacon’s scientific program explicitly required documenting monsters

Evidence

The Enlightenment’s focus on science, for all of its rationalism, included a rebirth of teratology, the study of monsters inspired by “monstrous births.” The focus on scientific inquiry also inspired monsters that were the result of exploration, mapping, and the discovery of new lands. Francis Bacon, whose work Novum Organon served as the model for Enlightenment scientific endeavors, urged that all monsters be documented, a task taken seriously by generations of scientists. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 351

Categorization

• SHARE: A colleague working on the history of science or early modern natural history would relish this — Bacon’s Novum Organon mandating monster documentation is a wonderful archival hook.
• DEFINE: Teratology as the ‘study of monsters’ inspired by monstrous births — a precise term the reader can deploy in their own analysis.