Abstract
My solution to the riddle of Bacon in no way contradicts the ones already mentioned. It is true that there was (and still is, especially in some secret societies) an imposing Bacon myth. It is true that his propaganda and utopianism helped him achieve his influential position. This is no explanation, however, of the respect that such giants as Boyle, Faraday and Herschel1 had for him. They quoted his Novum Oragnum and recommended it to young researchers: they sincerely viewed themselves as followers of Bacon in some sense or another, and they could not possibly overlook his methodology. His stress on method was new: his methodology is the centre of his view of science, and his influence is much due to this. Unlike other philosophies, his is the view of science as a process, that of an assured continuous discovery (“in streams” and “in buckets and vessels”); it is ever progressive. This is a utopian view of science. Also, Bacon’s philosophy was utopian in its suggestion that the progress of science will bring progress in general. This utopianism played a significant role in the rise of modern science, as it was a great contribution to the rise of the ethos and structure of the scientific fraternity.
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Notes
- 1.
Herschel said (Youmans 1867, 376),
Let, them have the glory—for glory it will really be—to have given a new impulse to public instruction by placing the Novum Organum, for the first time, in the hands of young men educating for active life, as a text-book, and as a regular part of their College course. It is strong meat, I admit, but its manly nutriment.
- 2.
That the rise of modern science is due to the Renaissance anti-dogmatism is no news. Nevertheless, few mention the anti-dogmatism of Copernicus Burtt (1924) 2003. Galileo’s influence in this respect is incomparably superior to Bacon’s, since Bacon’s theory and his influence were psychological. Galileo’s approach was rationalist: he expected his readers to trust their own reason, at least more than they trusted other people’s writings. He was not the first Renaissance rationalist or the greatest Renaissance methodologist. The view, now unanimously endorsed, that he is the father of modern science, is nevertheless not under consideration and I do not challenge it.
- 3.
The anti-Baconian view that scientific schools are good for science is still unwelcome, let me report: my inability to publish in a learned periodical my paper “Scientific Schools and their Success” (Agassi 1981) taught me about the extant reluctance to admit this fact. In quantum theory the Copenhagen school dominated the field and it presented itself openly as a school. This, however, physicists often view as an aberration due to an unwelcome metaphysical disputes between Bohr and Einstein, a dispute whose substance is more philosophical than scientific.
- 4.
There can be no Jews on the island of New Atlantis. But one cannot argue with a fact, to cite a Jewish saying. Of all of the New Atlanteans, it was a Jew who had befriended our reporter and who had arranged a meeting for him with the Father of Solomon’s House. In that meeting, we remember, the Father conveyed the only information we have about Solomon’s House; the rest is history. See Chapter 4.3 note 5.
- 5.
Spedding tried to explain why Bacon never finished writing that book. This again reflects his excessively high opinion of Bacon. For, Bacon hardly finished any original work of his, he had many problems in the story that he could not solve, and he stopped when he made the main point of the work, which is very much to say for a loose writer like Bacon. The popular view that The New Atlantis has some literary merits seems to me remarkable. As it is a take-off on Thomas More’s Utopia, one might expect it to have some literary merit. It is rather disappointing, mainly because, as usual, Bacon tried to hold the tension by promises to the reader what he could not fulfill. The story slows down quickly and the descriptions become increasingly unimaginative. The peak of the story is its conclusion, which comprises the narrator’s conversation with the Father of the College. It is a dry monologue. Yet this monologue made history because of the exciting idea that it conveys—of a successful secular research college.
- 6.
Jacob Bronowski complained in his paper read to the educational committee of the British Association in 1955 that of the many statues in the Albert Hall in London not a single statue was of a scientist. More seriously, just yesterday the United States victimized its national hero J. Robert Oppenheimer for his refusal to cooperate in military research (Stephanson 1989, 239).
- 7.
I find it rather distasteful that some modern commentators on Bacon’s metaphysics ignore his hostility to metaphysics. It sounds quite deceptive. The same goes for many comments on Newton although his opposition was not to metaphysics but to its inclusion in philosophy, namely, in science.
- 8.
- 9.
Wittgenstein’s cryptic remarks on methodology are too oracular and deliberately mystifying to allow for a definite decision as to how much his views were Baconian or near-Baconian.
- 10.
This is only one facet of Aristotle’s animism; the other is his identification of the word properly defined with the thing it properly designates, which is a refined magical attitude towards language. This is the essence of savage thinking, says Claude Lévi-Strauss.
- 11.
For more detail, see the celebrated passage of Popper on Aristotle’s theory of definition (Popper 1945, Chapter 11, section ii) as well as Grene (1974, Introduction and Ch. 1) and Loy (1988).
- 12.
Thus, as the essentialism of Ludwig Wittgenstein was metaphysical and not methodological, debate rages as to whether he was an essentialist or not, with both parties having evidence to support them, as is usual with confusions.
- 13.
According to Aristotle, Socrates was the inventor of the method of induction that leads to definitions. Ellis ignores here this item, as well as its role as the origin of the link between induction and definition that plays a great role in Aristotle’s theory of science. Popper discussed this at length (Popper 1945, Ch. 11). Bacon introduces his theory by contrasting idols with the ideas of the divine mind (Novum Organum, 1, Aph. 23). For, he differed from Aristotle about hypotheses: the one allowed for them (Dickie 1922, 478–9) and the other viewed them as the source of all impediments to scientific progress.
- 14.
David Hilbert’s idea that the undefined terms are subject to implicit definitions shows that all the traditional theories of definitions are wanting.
- 15.
I use Kitchin’s translation here, since Ellis translates “discussing” instead of “formation” in his translation of “executiendas definitiones et ideas”, I do not know why. Bacon’s claim that Plato used induction only up to a point alludes to his famous complaint that Plato mixed science with metaphysics as well as with natural theology. Ellis notes here (in a note to the Latin text) that this is clear evidence that Bacon never claimed to be the first inductivist. (Another is the end of his Filum Labyrinthi.) He did not see here a repeated claim for his idea that free of prejudice induction is a very new game. Properly speaking, dialectic is not induction but propaedeutic, the preparatory to it that in Bacon’s system is the cleaning of the mind and the collection of information.
- 16.
Possibly, Bacon used the word dialectic like Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée), whose terminology, Ellis has observed, influenced that of Bacon (Works, 3, 530n.). Ramus used “Dialectics” to mean both “logick” and “Method”. He then sub-divided Logick into Invention and Judgment. His Method was the demand to start from definitions, and these he identified with natural laws, i. e., descriptions of the essences of the things defined. Ellis emphasized that Ramus had a great influence on Bacon (Works, 1. 47, 91 and esp. 205). Bacon’s seemingly criticized Remus’s theory of definition (Works, 3, 407 and 4, 453); this shows that he had nothing against it. Ellis rightly said, Ramus was Aristotelian despite himself.
- 17.
Again, for “ut faciamus intellectum humanum rebus et naturae parem” I use Kitchin’s translation, since I do not understand Ellis’ “that of rendering the human understanding a match for things and nature”.
- 18.
- 19.
As this practice may upset rationalist readers, let me mention that Claude Lévi-Strauss wisely viewed it as common in the myth world and as reasonable: to switch between extreme options inconsistent with each other is better than to stick to one of them dogmatically. A reform of the system is still better but not easy. Indeed, the polarity that that Lévi-Strauss describes results from reforms within systems in which deletion is impossible. No matter how mythical radicalism is, here it is the pole opposite to the myth-world. The new system allows for error without deleting it. This is the glorious achievement of Popper’s rationalism.
- 20.
Patricia Kitcher says (Kitcher, 1990, 38), Kant “had no sympathy for nativist lazy hypotheses” (ignava ratio, Critique, A689 B717): a priori knowledge is not inborn but acquired through mental activities triggered by sensory data. Kant’s theory of learning and his methodology are empiricist, even Baconian; his epistemology is decidedly not. Bacon’s epistemology is not clear. Commentators from Locke to Ellis took it for granted that it is empiricist, and that became a trend.
- 21.
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Agassi, J. (2013). Bacon’s Philosophy of Discovery. In: The Very Idea of Modern Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 298. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_2
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