He became best known as a leading thinker in new ways of looking at the world. His writings started and made famous a way of thinking about science. This way of thinking is now called the "Baconian method". It is based on looking at the world by making experiments. After watching the results the scientist comes up with an idea to explain what has happened. This idea or hypothesis is then further tested by more experiments. This way of thinking about science is called inductive methodology. In Bacon's time these methods were linked with magic including hermeticism and alchemy. Alchemy was the study of fire, earth, water and air. Alchemists tried to make gold from lead.