Francis Bacon and man’s two-faced kingdomAntonio Pérez-RamosTwo closely related but distinct tenets about Bacon’s philosophy have been allbut rejected by contemporary historiography. The first is Bacon’s attachment tothe so-called British empiricist school, that is, the perception of him as theforerunner or inspirer of thinkers such as Locke, Berkeley or Hume. Thisputative lineage has been chiefly the result of nineteenth-century Germanscholarship, beginning with Hegel’s ownVorlesungen über die Geschichte derPhilosophieand his trail of imitators and disciples.1The glaring fact that Bacon’sname is hardly (if at all) mentioned by his progeny of would-be co-religionists,or the serious questioning of the existence of any such entity as the ‘Britishempiricist school’, has added further weight to this radical work of revision ofthe Lord Chancellor’s significance.2The canon of great philosophers is, to a greatextent, a matter of flux, and nationalistic attachments or polarizations shouldalways pale beside the historically recorded use of the same idiolect inphilosophical matters, as is largely the case with Descartes or Malebranche—those French ‘rationalists’— and Locke, Berkeley or Hume—those ‘Britishempiricists’.The second tenet that awaits clarification is the exact nature of Bacon’s ownphilosophical achievement as regards the emergence of the new scientificmovement—a movement usually associated with the names of Copernicus,Galileo, Kepler, Descartes or Newton. This point is extremely difficult to assess,for it is almost demonstrably true that no such stance or category as our ‘science’(any more than our ‘scientist’) existed in Bacon’s day and for a long timethereafter,3and hence the web of interpretations must make generous allowancesfor an inevitable although self-aware anachronism. Bacon was systematicallydeified by the English Royal Society, by eighteenth-century Frenchphilosophesand by eminent Victorian figures such as Herschel or Whewell.Research hasshown, however, that the tenor of such deifications was different in each case;for example, the last-namedBaconsbildwas largely prompted by criticism ofsupposedly Baconian doctrines coming from David Brewster and other Scottishscientists and philosophers, as well as from Romantic notions about the role of‘genius’ in science, hardly compatible with the allegedly egalitarian character ofBacon’s methodology.4Be that as it may, as an example of the sort of culturalconsensus which transcends the limits of what can be reasonably termed‘philosophy’ and adopts the sweeping pathos of an all-embracing ideology, wecan profitably read this anonymous passage5 from theQuarterly Review—asample of Bacon’s cult in Victorian England:The Baconian philosophy, having for its object the increase of humanpleasures and the decrease of human pains, has on this principle made allits brilliant discoveries in the physical world, and having thereby effectedour vast progress in the mechanical arts, has proved itself to be the allsufficientphilosophy.This evaluation has radically changed in our century. Bacon’s philosophy hasbeen solemnly declared a fraud, bearing, as a methodology, no relationwhatsoever to the heritage of the true founding fathers of modern science—all ofthem representatives of mathematically inspired patterns of thought, that is, mensuch as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes or Mersenne. Thus, any talk aboutBacon’s methodology has been dismissed as ‘provincial and illiterate’.6Now andthen, however, Baconianapologiaehave appeared, for example Paolo Rossi’sbookFrancesco Bacone.Dalla Magia alla Scienza(Italian original published in1957),7but it is a most telling sign of the ostensibly difficult position that wouldbeapologists have to defend that nowadays the terms of the debate are most ofthe time centred around the ‘arts of communication and rhetoric’, the generalhistory of ideas, politics and literature, rather than dealing with philosophy proper.8Reminders such as Paolo Rossi’s have been all too rare, and scant attention hasbeen paid to Bacon’s philosophical credentials:One very obvious thing must not be forgotten: the science of the 17th and18th centuries was at once GalileanandBaconianandCartesian.9Yet, the sense in which a branch at least of the new science was Baconianremains opaque if a precise answer is not given to this precise historical query:what exactly makes a science Baconian?Now, it is the great merit of T.S.Kuhn to have solved (partly at least) thisscholarly enigma by providing a highly plausible profile of that new entity inWestern culture: the Baconian sciences which, both as regards their objects ofknowledge and their methodology, entered the sanctioned canon of secularresearch about half a century after the death of their inspirer. Contrary to hismathematically tutored counterpart, the Baconian natural philosopher aspired toisolate some humble pieces of knowledge by drawing copious histories orinventories of the phenomena under investigation—sometimes viewing them forthe first time as worthy objects of study—and then cautiously and provisionallytheorizing on his findings.10In brief, the Baconian natural philosophercreatedorpartook of a novel ‘style of scientific thinking’.11The contention thatexperimenting in certain new fields of research— e.g. magnetism, electricity,living matter and so forth—in the way we observe in men like Boyle or Hookeand a host of minor virtuosi is a legitimate goal of the inquiring mind bypassesthe blunt question as to Bacon’s direct influence on Western science. Thosethinkers and their changing relation with their mathematical counterpartsestablished the rise of a solid experimental tradition whose ultimate source wefind in the then prevalent interpretation of the Lord Chancellor’s writings.12Thefusion of the mathematical tradition with the Baconian was to become afascinating and decisive chapter in the history of Western thought, but it tookplace with different rhythms and priorities in each science as well as in eachcountry. To date, however, this is the best answer that we possess as regards thesignificance of Baconian ideas amongst methodologically minded scientists. Asto philosophy proper and the intrinsic merits of, say, Bacon’s seminal insights onmethod or induction (questions intriguingly absent from the concerns of the earlyBaconians), the only significant exception to the chorus of universal denigrationseems to be the study systematically undertaken by L. Jonathan Cohen. From hisinterpretations there emerges, amongst other findings, the unexpected notion of aBaconian as against a Pascalian conception of probability, and the general andradical revision of Bacon’s ideas in the context of scientific methodology. In fine,a new philosophical setting for re-evaluation and study is beginning to takeshape.13Bacon’s main starting-point is expressly announced in the very title of hisoverambitiousInstattratio Magnaand of its second (and only completed) part:theNovum Organum.14That is, Bacon places himself, as a thinker, under theaegis of beneficent and radical innovation. Now, it would be utterly naive topresuppose that categories of innovation and novelty have been coextensivethroughout history. On the contrary, men have devised different techniques whendealing with new ideas or objects whenever it was felt that the accepted fabric ofmeanings was unable to account for or assimilate a challengingnovum. InBacon’s case most scholars agree that a particular kind of utopianism was thedriving force that acted behind his philosophical endeavours. Nevertheless, thereare many brands of utopianism and Bacon’s cognitive project of a newinstauratioblends together some of the most recondite meanings of early modernUtopian thought. First of all, that thought doesnotrecognize or think itself asrevolutionary in our sense of the term, and therefore it does not inscribe itself ina linear conception of history, contrary to what Bacon’s most vocal admirerswere to assume in the eighteenth century.15The living roots of Bacon’sutopianism, as manifested by his frequent use of the concept ofinstauration,aresimultaneously religious, ritual, civil and ‘technological’.Instaurareis nothingless than ‘restoring’ man’s power over Nature as he wielded it before the Fall;instaurare,furthermore, means to channel the pathos of novelty towardsepistemic and political goals that bear the traces of spiritual edification andsocietal initiation (as in the phraseinstauratio imperiito be found in the tractTemporis Partus Masculus,draftedc.1603); and, lastly,instaurarestrikes atechnological chord because Bacon makes his own the architectural topos whichthe term had come to express in most Western languages.16Thus, Baconexplicitly refers to God as ‘Deus universi, conditor, conservator, instaurator’(II,15). Or, as he puts it in the celebrated lines ofNovum OrganumII, 52:Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and fromhis dominion over Creation. Both of these losses, however, can even in thislife be in some part repaired, the former by religion and faith, the latter byarts and sciences.(IV, 247f.; I, 365f.)Further yet, when Bacon expresses himself in a more sober manner, what heseems to present as his own golden age of thought turns out to be the pre-Socratic period, as though the tradition of ‘yet former ages’ had an unexploredpotential that modern thought, however innovative, could perhaps restore buthardly surpass or emulate.Bacon’sinstauratio ab imis fundamentis(‘a new beginning from the veryfoundations’, IV, 53) in fact leads from past-oriented humanism andChristian ideas of innovation to the early modern concept of revolution,forwhich antecedents become irrelevant. Instauratio is a flexible vehicle thathelps Bacon to leap that distance.17There is a second starting-point in Bacon’s speculations which is not, historicallyspeaking, so tied to the particular kind of culture to which Bacon belonged andagainst which he reacted. Like Plato’s Myth of the Cave or Kant’s Dove ofReason, Bacon’s typology of human error can be understood and appreciated(and in fact it usually is) outside the specific province of Bacon’s philosophy. Sohis theory of the Idols or canonical forms of error imprinted on the human mind(Nov. Org.I, 39–41) is one of the most brilliant precedents of later attempts atsystematically building up a catalogue or anthropological classification ofideologies.18Mankind, according to Bacon, is fatally prone to err for a variety ofreasons. As a species, it has its own limitations which make error inescapable; suchintellectual and sensory constraints are calledIdola Tribusor Idols of the Tribe,and there is no hint of an optimistic note as to whether they can be overcome orcured (Nov. Org.I, 399–41). Moreover, each man, when trying to know anything,invariably brings with him his own set of preferences and dislikes, that is, hisown psychological make-up, which will colour whatever he attempts to cognizein its purity. These prejudices are the so-calledIdola Specusor Idols of the Cave(Bacon is alluding to Plato’s image inRepublic514A–519D), to which all of us,as individuals, are subject (Nov. Org.I, 42). Further yet, man is the hopelessvictim of the traps and delusions of language, that is, of his own great tool ofknowledge and communication, and hence he will fall prey to theIdola ForiorIdols of the Marketplace, which unavoidably result from his being a speakinganimal (Nov. Org.I, 43). And, lastly, the very act of entering into intercoursewith others conjures up a great panoply of illusion and imposture, where truthsuccumbs to the sophistries of social convention: these are theIdola TheatriorIdols of the Theatre. According to Bacon, there is no thinking in a vacuum: manis beset by what others thought before him, and therefore he is the appointed heirto all past sects and philosophies. The Idols of the Theatre are for ever hoveringover the prospective philosopher (Nov. Org.I, 44). The mind of man, in sum, isby no means atabula abrasa,to use the consecrated empiricist shibboleth, butrather an ‘enchanted glass’ or ‘distorted mirror’ (St Paul, I Cor. 13: 9–10, 12).The true interpreter of Nature, that is, the true philosopher, must be always on hisguard against the intrusion of suchTrugbilderor mirages into his field ofcognitive interests. Bacon, however, never expressly states that man can becomeentirely free from such deceiving propensities. Not even the last of them, that is,theIdola Theatrior unlawful children of philosophy, disappear from themenacing potential of Bacon’s own speculations.Let us go back to the technocratic component that the concept ofinstauratioencapsulated. Bacon, seemingly innocently, defines philosophy as ‘the Inquiry ofCauses and the Production of Effects’ (De AugmentisIII, 4: I, 550; IV, 346).Likewise, the High Priest in theNova Atlantisinstructs the admiring visitor bytelling him that ‘the end of our Foundation [that is, Salomon’s House] is theknowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of thebounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible’ (III, 156).Now, the decisively striking point in these and similar definitions is their secondpart, for traditional philosophical discourse did not contemplate thephysicalproduction of anything. Surely, the ‘effects’(opera)to be achieved are dictatedby the general philanthropic tenor of Bacon’s philosophy, but it would be a grossmistake to confuse it, as is often done, with any form of utilitarianism.19First ofall, we have to identify the ideological trend that Bacon is recapturing whenproffering such pithy definitions. Now, this trend leads us back to a traditionwhich, though prior to humanistic thought, inspired a great deal of philosophicalwriting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, the first greatrepresentative of this current in the modern epoch is Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), who systematically reflected on the much-discussed relationship betweenGod’s and man’s intellect and theiropera. Heir to Neoplatonic traditions, Cusaestablishes that man, that fallen creature, is not wholly devoid of that allimportantand defining attribute of the Christian Godhead: the power to create.20Even as God created the world, man is empowered to create another world (thatof mathematicals and abstract notions) in so far as he is not eternally condemnedto copying or imitating Nature but is able to surpass her by making items (e.g. aspoon) for which Nature has no exemplar or prototype.21Of course, Cusa’s maininterests were theological and hence he did not develop a line of thought whichwe could easily link with ‘the question of technology’, as it came to beformulated much later. But it is surprising how tantalizingly close he came togiving a systematic response to many of the sporadic pronouncements—sometimes articulated in interrogative form—which abound in the perhaps betterknown reflections of the humanists. Let us quickly review some of them.Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) pithily writes that ‘man knows as far as he canmake’,22posing thereby a pragmatic criterion for knowledge and certainty whichothers were to exploit in various forms. Cardanus (1501–76) establishes that onlyin mathematics is there certainty, because the intellect itselfproducesorbringsforththe entities it operates with.23Leonardo (1452–1519) states that humanscience is a second creation.24The sceptic Francisco Sanches (1552–1623), inQuod Nihil Scitur(1581), uses this topos to castigate human reason, since onlyGod can know what he has made.25Bruno (1548–1600) rejects the primacy ofcontemplation and argues that, where there is the power to make and to producesomething, there is also the certainty of that something being known.26Paracelsus (1493–1541) clearly argues that Nature has to be artificially broughtto the point where she discloses herself to man’s enquiring gaze.27Even lessknown figures are eager to stress that it ishomo faberonly who wields the soleand true weapons enabling him to enter into Nature’s mysteries. For example, thesixteenth-century Italian engineer Giuseppe Ceredi expresses the notion thatmodelling ‘Nature as if it become mechanical in the construction of the worldand of all the forms of things’ would enable the natural philosopher, by properand voluntary manipulation, to attain ‘to the perfection of art and to the stableproduction of the effects that is expected’.28Now, this tradition of thought goesback to classical Antiquity, and identifies objects of knowledge and objects ofconstruction in various fields and degrees. For example, this is done inmathematics, craftsmanship, theology, astronomy and other disciplines, and lateron this topos helped people to rethink the essence and role of human art, which,in view of the fertility of man’s inventiveness, could no longer be perceived as asimple mimesis or imitation of Nature.29Several labels can be aptly applied tothis particular cast of the human mind when reflecting on the problem ofknowledge: the ‘ergetic ideal’ is a very accurate appellation;30theverum ipsumfactumprinciple echoes a historically consecrated formula (by Giambattista Vicoin the eighteenth century); and the name ‘maker’s knowledge’ reminds us thatimages of science, ideals of thought and abstract speculations on the cognitivepowers of man are grounded on and ultimately lead to a handful of historicallyand socially given archetypes: man as beholder, man as user, man as maker.31Forthese reasons, Bacon’s definition of philosophy and its ‘productive’ appendixturns out to be slightly less original than it appeared at first sight (or rather, atsecond sight, for at first sight it could well be taken for a trivial utilitarian tag).True, it must have seemed so to Bacon’s contemporaries, accustomed as theywere to a ‘verbal’ kind of culture which Bacon so directly attacks. Likewise, thefamous dictum ‘Knowledge is power’ appears in a different light now: knowledgeis that manipulatory power(potentia)which serves as its own guarantee.32Thus far what we might term Bacon’s implicit or tacit starting-point inepistemological matters. He is the (unexpected?) representative of an establishedbut almost hidden gnoseological tradition. His driving force seems to be thevindication of a prototype or paradigm of knowledge and of a criterion to gaugeit that he (unlike other thinkers) nowhere appears to have fully articulated in anabstract and systematic manner. Yet, Bacon’s starting-point, as revealed by therhetorical devices he employs in order to commend his cognitive project and bythe religious mould in which he chooses to cast his programme, is as transparentas it could be. Most significantly, Bacon contrasts the progress andperfectiveness of human art, as portrayed in technical innovation, with thestagnation and backwardness of philosophy (ParasceveI, 399; IV, 257;DeAugmentisII, ch. 2: I, 399f.; IV, 297f.). The printing press, the mariner’scompass and the use of gunpowder are not only the indelible marks of modernitybut the living proof of the fertility of the human mind when correctly applied tothose things it is legitimately fit to know or invent. Yet, one should stress herethe tremendous axiological shift that Bacon is silently proposing as his rockbottomoption for, on purely logical grounds,nothingis intrinsically more‘useful’ than anything else, except with respect to a scale of values which, initself, ought to remain beyond the very scope of discussion about fertility orsterility.33The specific contents of a given philosophical discourse may originallycorrespond to or be the basis of an ideal of science which, for a variety ofreasons, is subsequently forgotten or overshadowed by a competing one. ThatBacon’s insights into the nature of human knowledge constitute a coherent typeof operativist or constructivist epistemology in the sense enunciated above by nomeans implies that theingredientsof Bacon’s scientific ideal could not havebeen extracted from the original context and taken over by other cognitiveprogrammes or proposals. Ideas about induction, experiment, mattertheory andthe like belong to this class of ingredients, as do in other domains techniques ofmeasurement or the register of natural constants. The latter build up the specific‘grammar’ of a discourse (i.e. its syntactic rules, its vocabulary and so on),whilst the former are akin to the general semantics which the text ultimatelyappeals to or reveals. Thus, the elementary propositions of geometrical optics(e.g. the laws of refraction or reflection) can serve the purposes of and beincorporated into both a corpuscularian and an undulatory theory of light.Likewise, Bacon’s seminal insights about induction or experiment may bestudied, to a large extent at least, independently of any discussion about themaker’s knowledge ideal.Contrary to a widespread opinion, Francis Bacon was not the first philosopherwho tried to elaborate something akin to a logic of induction, and the wealth ofremarks left by Aristotle onepag gwell deserve exposition and comment.34The scholastic tradition, by contrast, was more bent on the predominantlydeductive cast of Aristotle’s mind, and hence the Schoolmen’s references toinduction are both repetitive and shallow.35In brief, they distinguished between aso-calledinductio perfecta,which enumerated all the particulars underconsideration, and aninductio imperfecta,which omitted some of them andtherefore was liable to be overthrown by any contradictory instance. In neithercase, however, did the scholastics or rhetoricians consider induction as a logicalprocess for gaining knowledge. Francis Bacon was well aware of this tradition,and so he calls ‘puerile’ (Nov. Org.I, 105: I, 205; IV, 97; cf. also I, 137; IV, 24)the imperfect induction of the Schoolmen. That he did not care to mention theinductio perfectamay mean that, like other theoreticians afterwards, he did notconsider it induction at all.36Be that as it may, a cursory perusal of Bacon’sdescription of his own form of induction, and, above all, of the illustrations hegives of its deployment and use inNovum OrganumII, 11–12, 36, builds up astrong case for deciding that Bacon’s employment of the term (even as of theterm ‘form’, as we shall see) is but a mark of his self-confessed terminologicalconservatism (Nov. Org.II, 2), rather than a direct reference to a lexically wellestablishednotion.The starting-point for the deployment of Bacon’sinductiois roughly similar tothat of previousinductiones(as described in contemporaneous textbooks ofphilosophy and rhetoric).37Nevertheless, it covers a register of logicalprocedures and is directed towards an aim —i.e. the discovery of Forms—thatseparates it off from traditional acceptations of that term. As a matter of fact,Bacon’sinductiobelongs to the new-born movement of thears inveniendi,andperhaps we should understand the terminductioas an umbrella word of sortscovering different steps and procedures.38For brevity, I shall call them (1) theinductive, (2) the deductive and (3) the analogical steps.Bacon never tired of stressing that before his great logical machine could beput into use a vast collection or inventory of particulars should be made, buildingup a ‘natural history’(historia naturalis et experimentalis)on which theinvestigator could firmly base himself before proceeding further. This notion of a‘natural history’ found its finest hour with the members of the Royal Society, andeven Descartes wrote to Mersenne most approvingly about this Baconian project.39The notion, however, is somewhat circular in Bacon’s mind, for natural historiesworth their salt should contain a record of artificial things or of ‘effects’(opera)wrought by man, that is, ‘Nature in chains’ (I, 496ff.; III, 33ff.; IV, 253), andalso of what we would term today ‘theory-laden experiments’ or, in Bacon’scolourful phrase, information resulting from ‘twisting the lion’s tail’: these arecalled upon to show how Nature behaves under unforeseen or ‘unnatural’circumstances. The artificialist twist that Bacon gave to his original notion wasnot always well understood, and the full meaning of his concept of ‘experience’became duly simplified as time went on and Bacon’s insight simply came tomean ‘compilation’.40If, as L.Jonathan Cohen argues, all inductions can be divided into ampliativeand summative,41then Bacon’s concept is clearly a case of ampliative inductionby way of elimination. It is not the sheer number of instances that counts inBaconian induction, but what we can term their ‘quality’. This is clearlyexpressed by Bacon in theNovum Organumby isolating twenty-seven privilegedor ostensibly telling manifestations of the phenomenon under study (i.e. anaturain Bacon’s terminology) which carry a special, sometimes decisive, weight in theunfolding of the whole inquiry:unde terminatur questio(I, 294; IV, 150).Amongst other things, such privileged orprerogativeinstances (like mainwitnesses in a judicial hearing) are to help the investigator to establish the threecanonical tables of Baconianinductio,that is, of Absence, Presence, and Degreeof thenaturain question, according as to whether a given phenomenon ornaturaappears always on its own, always accompanied by another, concomitantphenomenon, or sometimes varies in its conjunction according to circumstancesthat the investigator has to determineormanipulate (IV, 149–55; I, 261–8). Now,it is self-evident that the result of all these procedures is to isolate thephenomenon X, with whose manifestation we started, in order to find a kind ofexplanation(forma)of its essence or innermost being, as Bacon profuselyillustrated with the cases of heat and motion inNovum OrganumII, 20. In his ownworked-out example, heat turns out to be, after all due rejections have beenmade, a species or particular class of motion, duly qualified and distinct. Buthere something exceptionally important happens. It is not the inductive work, thatis, the summative or accumulative operation consisting of tabulating the differenttypes of heat and their concomitantnaturae,that seems to be functioning now,but a calculated series of deductive procedures aiming for the most part ateliminating redundant material in the form of a battery of deductive tests, that is,prerogative instances whose ‘inductive’ role is to serve as a deductive canon.These instances are sometimes falsification procedures of sorts, sometimesverificationist or probative attempts. For clarity, let us dwell on the followingexample. Bacon is here discussing thenaturaandformaof weight, that is, thebest explanation which could answer this particular query: is weight, as anatura,a quality inherent in all bodies (something akin to form and extension) or is theweight of a particular body a variable depending on that body’s distance from theEarth? The following reasoning belongs to Bacon’s induction, but its deductivecredentials are impeccable when he casts his argumentation into the scheme ofaninstantia crucis,or Instance of the Fingerpost in Victorian English:Let the nature in question be Weight or Heaviness. Here the road willbranch into two, thus. It must needs be that heavy and weighty bodieseither tend of their own nature to the centre of the Earth by reason of theirproper configuration[per proprium schematismum];or else that they areattracted by the mass or body of the Earth itself[a massa corporea ipsiusTerrae]as by the congregation of kindred substances, and move to it bysympathy[per consensum]. If the latter be the case, it follows that, thenearer heavy bodies approach the Earth, the more rapid and violent is theirmotion; and that the further they are from the Earth, the feeble and moretardy is their motion (as in the case of magnetical attraction); and thatthis action is confined to certain limits[intra spatium certum],so that ifthey were removed to such a distance from the Earth that the Earth’s virtuecould not act upon them, they would remain suspended like the Earthitself, and not fall at all.(IV, 184f.; I, 298f.)It is obvious from this presentation of the dilemma that Bacon is stressing theimportance of a falsificationist procedure of themodus tollenskind: the endresult expresses, logically speaking, the rejection of one hypothesis rather thanthe confirmation of its rival. The tacit presupposition that they exhaust the fieldof possible hypotheses is irrelevant at this stage; for Baconinductiois an openendedprocess and a third hypothesis may be suggested afterwards.Now in order to decide between the two theories Bacon goes on to propose anexperiment which reproduces a pattern of reasoning already deployed in theTable of Rejections and Exclusions. The followinginstantia crucis42 bears themark both of Bacon’s artificialist approach to natural inquiries (the whole pointnow is tocreatenew data) and of the eminently deductive character of the wholeprocedure:Take a clock moved by leaden weights, and another moved by thecompression of an iron spring; let them be exactly adjusted, that one go nofaster than the other; then place the clock moving by weights onto the topof a very high steeple, keeping the other down below; and observecarefully whether the clock on the steeple goes more slowly than it did onaccount of the diminished virtue of its weights[propter diminutam virtutemponderum]. Repeat the experiment[experimentum]in the bottom of amine, sunk to a great depth below the ground; that is, observe whether theclock so placed does not go faster than it did, on account of the increasedvirtue of its weights[per auctam virtutem ponderum]. If the virtue of theweights is found to be diminished on the steeple and increased in the mine,we may take the attraction of the mass of the Earth as the cause of weight.(IV, 185; I, 299)Thus, we may extract at least five deductive procedures embedded in the fabric ofBacon’s so-called induction, all of them leading to an educated guess(opinabile)as to the Form or explanation of the phenomenon under scrutiny.43This ofcourse reinforces our claim that Bacon was using the terminductioin an extremelyloose sense, meaning perhaps what a modern would call ‘a logic of scientificdiscovery’, rather than trying to ‘ameliorate’ the procedure called by that nameas understood by contemporary rhetoricians and philosophers.Nor is this all. If we go back to the famous Baconian inquiry as to the Form ofheat, we shall find that the (provisional) end result orvindemiatio prima(literally,‘first vintage’) runs as follows:Heat is a motion, expansive, restrained and acting in its strife upon thesmaller particles of bodies. But the expansion is thus modified; while itexpands all ways, it has at the same time an inclination upwards. And thestruggle in the particles is modified also; it is not sluggish, but hurried[incitatus]and with violence[cum impetu nonnullo].(Nov. Org.II, 20; iv, 153; i, 266)This is, in Bacon’s phrase, the ‘first vintage’ orpermissio intellectus,which isobviously a way of saying his firsthypothesisafter the exclusions and rejectionsresulting from the Tables. Now, it would be utterly useless to seek the relevantadjectives(incitatus, expansivus…)in the foregoing Tables—those indeed thatmake possible the exercise of ‘inductive’ reason—nor in the main thesis itself,namely that heat is a species of motion of such and such a kind. Bacon’sreasoning now is neither deductive nor inductive butanalogical,that is, it seemsto leap beyond what logic proper would allow. If Bacon calls these highlyspeculative jumpspermissiones intellectus,and the moment the mind is allowedto make themvindemiatioor vintage, then one has to stress that in such stagesnegative instances are the most valuable and trustworthy of all:major est visinstantiae negativae(Nov. Org.I, 46). This, of course, no verificationist wouldadopt as a guideline. But when, how and why is it ‘permissible’ for the humanintellect to proceed to such flights of creative imagination is something Baconleaves embarrassingly in the dark: his approach is, so to speak, phenomenologicalas regards the inquiring mind, rather than, as with Descartes andothers, foundationist or legitimatizing. Thus, that heat is a motion of such andsuch characteristics is the result of our ‘first vintage’ in the investigation of thatphenomenon ornatura,but as a theoretical statement it only possesses a certaindegree of certainty: the method of inference is gradual (Nov. Org.II, 18), andhypothetical (Nov. Org.II, 18, 20). All this notwithstanding, a crucialqualification should be made here, and this sends us back to our chief thesisabout Bacon’s being a proponent of the ergetic ideal or of a maker’s knowledgetype of epistemology. In a nutshell, although the statements resulting from thefirst vintage are not in themselves theoretically definitive or binding and, inBacon’s gradualist epistemology, they are subject to further revisions andrefinements, all of them should be true in one all-important aspect, that is, asrules of action or as recipes for the successful manipulation of Nature. That iswhy the above aphorism continues in one breath:Viewed with reference to operation, it is the same thing[res eadem]. Forthe direction is this: If in any natural body you can excite a dilating orexpanding motion, and can so repress this motion and turn it back uponitself, that the dilatation shall not proceed equably, but have its way in onepart and be counteracted in another, you will undoubtedly[proculdubio]generate heat.(IV, 155; I, 266)That Bacon’s ‘rule of action’ has rather a conative character should not detain ushere. The essential point to grasp is that, though the process of investigatingnatural phenomena is theoretically open-ended, the investigator has to attain somekind of collateral security (quasi fidejussione quadam: Nov. Org.I, 206) whichresults from the ‘production of effects’ (I, 550; IV, 346) appearing in Bacon’svery definition of philosophy. Such manipulation (ideally, ‘production’) shallshed further light on the object under investigation, in so far as by activelyengaging in Nature’s processes those statements may disclose new andunexpected phenomena. To put it graphically, the cognitive process which Baconseems to have in mind would look something like Figure 4.1.44As we can see, the net of theoretical pronouncements (remember, ‘rules ofaction’) does not stand on a level, but goes up the scale according as it coversmore and more phenomena: sometimes anaxiomais ‘derived’ from a collectionof phenomena ornaturae;sometimes it points the way (‘downwards’) tounexpected and ‘artificial’ evidence. The leapfrogging articulation of the wholedoes justice, I think, to the several kinds of support that theory has to receive inBacon’s conception. The term by which an axiom or theoretical statement of agiven generality is declared to be a rule of action(ad operativam),as well asbeing capable of receiving support from unforeseeable quarters, isfidejussio,aspointed out above, and it is a proof of Bacon’s extraordinary acumen that he hiton one of the very characteristics that later theoreticians were to develop, namelythat the worth of a scientific conjecture or hypothesis (anopinabile) is mostvividly shown by evidence that it originally wasnotdesigned to explain.45The vexed question of the Baconian Form is inextricably linked to the doctrineof induction, since the aim of Bacon’sscientiais to discover the ‘Forms ofFigure 4.1Articulation betweenparticularia/operaandaxiomata/formaein Bacon’smethod: ascent and descent of axioms (Nov. Org.I. 19, 24, 103, 106)Things’. Scholars are to this day divided as to what exactly Bacon meant by thisterm. There are two main opposing groups: those for whom the Baconian Formwas an inchoate and clumsy equivalent of our conception of natural law, andthose who stress the most archaic elements of the notion and hence regard it as aremnant of a misunderstood Aristotelianism.46I have already mentioned Bacon’sself-confessed lexical conservatism, and recent research tends to regard theBaconian Form as a highly idiosyncratic response to the then prevalent theory of‘substantial forms’ which most thinkers of the modern age had to combat.47Thedoctrine of substantial forms was an elaborate attempt on the part of a renewedAristotelianism to defend itself against the ongoing attack of particulate theoriesof matter such as atomism. In the words of one of its most conspicuousrepresentatives, Francisco Suarez (1548–1617),48the most true opinion is that according to which in each compositesubstance there is only a substantial formal cause, and in each naturalcompound a substantial form.That is, within the matter and form dichotomy, the substantial forms arepresumed to penetrate into the ultimate reality of things by imparting to each lumpof matter those attributes and qualities that we can perceive. Fire, for example,has a substantial form whose nature is to burn, shine and so forth; an apple treeand a pine tree are different because the substantial form which configures theirtimber is different. The Baconian Form, on the other hand, tried to blendtraditional elements coming from Aristotelian matter theory with protocorpusculariandoctrines close to his own, and wavering, response to atomism:49For since the Form of a thing is the very thing itself[ipsissima res]and thething differs from the Form no otherwise than as the apparent differs fromthe real, or the external from the internal, or the thing in reference to manfrom the thing in reference to the Universe; it necessarily follows that nonature can be taken as the true Form unless it always decreases when thenature in question decreases, and in like manner always increases when thenature in question increases. This Table I call the Table of Degrees[TabulaGraduum]or the Table of Comparisons.(Nov. Org.II, 13: I, 248; IV, 137; cf. alsoNov. Org.II, 17: I, 257f.; IV,146)As we see, then, there is no qualitative gulf between Forms and natures, andsome of the latter can be promoted to the rank of Forms. This is so, as we saw inNovum OrganumII, 20, whenever we find the constructivist stance built inwithin the Baconian formula. The notion it purports to portray in both aphorisms(II, 13, 20) is not that scientific truth may be utilized or deployed in, say,technological achievements, but that truth itself, understood now as a processinseparable from manipulation, necessarily conveys that very constructivistcomponent: the Form isreal, internalandwith reference to the Universeas anygenuine rule of action should be. No wonder, then, that ‘in this sense truth andutility are the very same things’ (in hoc genere ipsissimae res sunt veritas etutilitas: Nov. Org.I, 124). This is a far cry from any utilitarian and,quautilitarian, reductionist credo, for truth, in Bacon’s ideal, may be ‘useful’ but isalways conceived as a result or spring of an axiologically neutral manipulation(uti, utilitas). Thus, it does not convey the evaluative tenor associated withutilitarianism in its historical forms.50It goes without saying that the reception ofall these doctrines was entirely biased in favour of utilitarian and pragmaticconsiderations, so that, paradoxically, the ferocious satire of Jonathan Swiftagainst the inventors of Lagado was not the brainchild of the writer’s derangedimagination: the promises of real ‘usefulness’, both by the Royal Society and byits sister association, the Académie des Sciences, were soon sorelydisappointed.51In sum, Bacon’s notion of truth detaches itself from thetheoretically inclined spirit of the greatest part of Western philosophicaldiscourse and recaptures that subterranean current of thought to which allusionwas made at the outset: maker’s knowledge versus beholder’s or user’s. Toengage actively in the processes of Nature mirrors the systematically heldconviction not only that such an engagement is legitimate—a conviction whichin its turn corresponds to a certain image of Naturequaobject of humanconstruction or fabrication52—but also that only from such an active engagementcan truth emerge. Theoretically speaking, Bacon’s epistemology is impeccablygradualist, as L.Jonathan Cohen remarks,53but it ceases to be so from themoment we reflect that each pronouncement, each general statement, eachaxiomahas to be truth-producingat any levelif we are genuinely after manipulativesuccess. It hardly needs to be pointed out that all this remains an ideal, for Bacondoes not even attempt to teach us how precisely we can manipulate thosecorpuscles he postulates as existing in each body in order to achieve this or that‘effect’. His recipes inNovum Organumor in other places (e.g. in III, 240) seemthe imaginative or fantastic projection of a magus’ mentality. But this would be,I think, a rather jejune line of criticism for a philosophically minded hermeneuticto take. Knowledge, we saw, operates with ideas as much as with ideals. Ifindeed Bacon failed on that particular account, the crucial point to remember isthat the tradition he bequeathed to Western philosophy, in the hands of otherphilosophers and scientists less prone to such visionary flights of fancy,succeeded where he only sowed the seeds of its desiderata. That is, after all, atradition that, for better or worse, our world appears to have made its own in itsutilitarian, scientistic and technocratic versions.In his indictment against the philosophers of the past, Bacon wrote in thePreface toDe Interpretatione Naturaethat they did not even teach man ‘what towish’. This criticism backfires dangerously when we consider that the realm ofdesires, that is, of values and priorities, is by no means dependent on nor resultsfrom any theoretically informed epistemology, no matter how brilliant its meritsor how eloquent its proponents. Bacon’s world, if we judge by the scatteredremarks left in the unfinishedNova Atlantis,does not show its credentials ofdesirability in the apodictic manner that the Lord Chancellor expected. ‘Toassuage human suffering and miseries’ is one thing; to maintain that thetechnocratic control over Nature—a control secretly wielded by a handful of men—provides the sole manner of fulfilment of the above desire is quite another.Bacon failed to work out the notion that all that wonderful machinery, that is, therealm of human art, could, however well administered, control its own controllersome fateful day. It could, that is, engender a logic of its own and, as in SamuelButler’s nightmare,54become a parallel or second nature, as formidable to masteras the firstfallenNature was. Bacon’s man seems therefore condemned to live ina menacing two-faced kingdom: the ship sailing beyond the pillars of Herculesthat the philosopher chose as the frontispiece of hisNovum Organumis notbound for a peaceful or uneventful voyage. To be both the master and the slaveat her helm is not amongst the lesser premonitions of the Lord Chancellor’sdream.NOTESI cite Bacon from the standard edition of J.Spedding, R.L.Ellis and D.D.Heath,The Works of Francis Bacon,14 vols (London, 1857–74; Stuttgart-BadCannstatt, Friedrich Frommann, 1963). Bacon’sPhilosophical Worksare in vols1–5 (Latin and English) andDe Sapientia Veterum,misleadingly included in vol.6 (pp. 605–764). References are to volume and page (as a rule both to theEnglish and Latin), except when quoting fromNovum Organum,where I haveusually indicated Book and Aphorism.1Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie,inWerke,ed. E.Moldenhauerand K.M.Michel (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1971), pp. xviii–xx, xx, 76ff. Hegelrepeatedly calls Bacon ‘der Heerführer der Erfahrungsphilosophen’ (‘thearmyleader of the philosophers of experience’) and links his name to Locke and theso-called empiricists. Kuno Fischer,Franz Baco von Verulam: die Realphilosophieund ihr Zeitalter(Leipzig, 1856; 2nd edn, 1875), and Wilhelm Windeband andH.Heimsoeth,Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie(Tübingen, 1930), pp.328ff.), do not depart substantially from Hegel’s views. Compare also H.E.Grimm,Zür Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems. Von Baco zu Hume(Leipzig,1890), and W.Frost,Bacon und die Naturphilosophie(München, 1927). Two verynotable exceptions to the then prevalent approach are to be found in French authors:Charles de Rémusat,Bacon, sa vie, son temps, sa philosophie jusqu'à nos jours(Paris, 1857), and Charles Adam,Philosophie de François Bacon(Paris, 1890),esp. pp. 328ff.2 cf. D.F.Norton, ‘The Myth of British Empiricism’,History of European Ideas1(1981) 331–4; Shapiro [4.75]; H.G.van Leeuwen,The Problem of Certainty inEnglish Thought (1630–1690)(The Hague, Nijhoff, 1963).3 cf. Nicholas Jardine, ‘Epistemology of the Sciences’, in C.B.Schmitt and Q.Skinner (eds),The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy(Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 685–712, at p. 685. Compare also M.N.Morris, ‘Science asScientia’,Physis23 (1981) 171–96, and S.Ross, ‘“Scientist”:the Story of a Word’,Annals of Science18 (1964) 65–85.4 cf. R.Yeo, ‘An Idol of the Market Place: Baconianism in 19th-century England’,History of Science23 (1985) 251–98; Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 7–30.5ApudR.C.Cochrane, ‘Francis Bacon and the Rise of the Mechanical Arts in 18thcenturyEngland’,Annals of Science11 (1956) 137–56, at p. 156. Compare alsoA.Finch,On the Inductive Philosophy: Including a Parallel between Lord Baconand A.Comte as Philosophers(London, 1872).6 I. Lakatos, ‘Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic’, in hisThe Problem ofInductive Logic(Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 315–427, at p. 318; A.Koyré,Etudesd’histoire de la pensée scientifique(Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1966).To speak of Bacon as one of the founding fathers of modern science, Koyré argueson p. 7, would be amauvaise plaisanterie.7Francis Bacon.From Magic to Science[4.70]. This book is a turning point asregards the revival of Baconian studies in our century.8 For an example of this kind of literature, cf. Farrington [4.35]; Christopher Hill,The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution(Oxford, 1965); Frances Yates,The Rosicrucian Enlightenment(London, Routledge, 1972); Lisa Jardine [4.45].9Dictionary of the History of Ideas,4 vols, chief ed. P.Wiener (New York, 1968–73), s.v. Baconianism, i, pp. 172–9, at p. 172.10 ‘Mathematical versus Experimental Tradition in Western Science’,The EssentialTension(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 31–66, esp. pp. 41–52.11 On the notion of ‘scientific style’, cf. Crombie [4.25].12 cf. T.S.Kuhn, note 10; Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 33ff.13 L.Jonathan Cohen,The Implications of Induction(London, Methuen, 1970);TheProbable and the Provable(Oxford, 1977); [4.22], 219–31; ‘What has InductiveLogic to Do with Causality’, in L.J.Cohen and M.B.Hesse (eds)Applications ofInductive Logic(Oxford, Clarendon, 1980);An Introduction to the Philosophy ofInduction and Probability(Oxford, 1988). Some of Cohen’s ideas about Bacon’s‘inductive’ gradualism seem to have been foreshadowed by J.M.Keynes inATreatise on Probability(first published London, Macmillan, 1929), ed.R.B.Braithwaite (London, Macmillan, 1973), esp. pp. 299ff.14 A brief and accurate description of Bacon’s gnoseological plan is given by M.B.Hesse in ‘Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science’, in Vickers [4.14], 114–39,esp. p. 114. This plan should proceed as follows:(1) The classification of the sciences. (2) Directions concerning theInterpretation of Nature; i.e. the new inductive logic. (3) The PhenomenaUniversi, or natural history. (4) The Ladder of the Intellect, that is, examplesof the application of the method in climbing from Phenomena on the ladderof axioms to the ‘Summary Law of Nature’. (5) Anticipations of the NewPhilosophy, that is, tentative generalizations which Bacon considers ofinsufficient interest and importance to justify him in leaping ahead of theinductive method. (6) The New Philosophy or Active Science, which willexhibit the whole result of induction in an ordered system of axioms. If menwill apply themselves to this method, Bacon thinks that the system will bethe result of a few years’ work, but for himself, he confesses, ‘thecompletion of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond myhopes’ (iv, 22, 32, 102, 252).(apudHesse [4.14], 115f.) Compare also Ducasse [4.33], 50–74.W.SchmidtBiggeman places this and other epistemic projects in a wider context:Topica Universalis.Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barokerWissenschaft(Hamburg, 1983), esp. pp. 212ff.15 Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 18ff.; M.Malherbe, ‘Bacon, L’Encyclopédie et la Révolution’,Etudes Philosophiques(1985) 387–404, esp. pp. 392ff.16 cf. Charles Whitney,Francis Bacon and Modernity(New Haven, Yale UniversityPress, 1986),passim;‘Francis Bacon’s Instauratio: Dominion of and overHumanity’,Journal of the History of Ideas48 (1989), esp. pp. 377ff.17 Whitney, ‘Francis Bacon’s Instauratio…’ op. cit., p. 386.18 cf. Karl Mannheim,Ideologie und Utopie(Bonn, F.Cohen, 2nd edn, 1930), pp. 14f.Hans Barth,Truth and Ideology(1945, 1961), trans. F.Lilge (Los Angeles, Calif.,University of California Press, 1976), disputes Mannheim’s claim. Compare ingeneral R.Boudon,L’Idéologie. L’origine des idées reçues(Paris, 1980), esp. pp.53ff.19 cf. B.Vickers, ‘Bacon’s So-called “Utilitarianism”: Sources and Influence’, inFattori [4.12], 281–314.20 cf. Vinzenz Rüfner, ‘Homo secundus deus. Eine geistesgeschichtliche Etüde zummenschlichen Schöpfertum’,Philosophisches Jahrbuch63 (1955) 248–91; HansBlumenberg, ‘“Nachahmung der Natur”: zur Vorgeschichte des schöpferischenMenschen’,Stadium Generale10 (1957) 266–83.21Philosophisch-Theologische Schriften,ed. L.Gabriel, 3 vols (Vienna, 1967), iii,DeBeryllo,pp. 8f., 68ff.,De Possest,pp. 318f. Compare Charles H.Lohr,‘Metaphysics’,The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy,op. cit., pp.548–56. Compare also Blumenberg, op. cit.,passim;and, especially,Aspekte derEpochenschwelle.Cusanus und Nolanus(Frankfurt-am-Main, 2nd edn, 1968), pp.34–108. The example of the spoon appears inIdiota de mente.22Tantum scis quam operabis,inSatellitum Mentis, Opera Omnia,ed. G.Mayans, 8vols (Valencia, 1782–90), iv, 63. On the influence of Vives’s views on Bacon’sconception of logic, cf. Maurice B.McNamie, ‘Bacon’s Inductive Method andHumanist Grammar’,Studies in the Literary Imagination4 (1971) 81–106.23 Gerolamus Cardanus (Cardano),Opera Omnia,ed. C.Spon, 10 vols (Lugduni,1663), introduction to the facsimile edition by A.Beck; cf.De Arcanis Aeternitatis,cap. iv; also i, 597, and iii, 21ff.24 cf. Rodolfo Mondolfo,Il verum factum prima di Vico(Naples, Guida, 1969), ch. 3.25Tratados Filosóficos(Latin/Portuguese), introduction and notes by A.M.de Sa;Portuguese translation by B.de Vasconcelos and M.P.de Meneses (Lisbon, 1955),pp. 4–157; cf. also Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 58, and Part III,passim,for the scepticalunderstanding of that ideal in (early) modern philosophy.26 ‘Where there has always been the power to make, there has always been, too, thepower of being made, produced and created[onde se è sempre stata la potenza difare, di produrre, sempre è stata la potenza di esser fatto, produto (sic) e creato]’(Delia Causa, principio ed uno,III, inDialoghi Metafisici,ed. Giovanni Gentile, 2vols (Florence, 1985), i, 280ff. Compare especially this passage fromLo Spacciodella Bestia Trionfante,vol. i:The gods have given [man] intellect and hands and have made him similarto them, giving him power over other animals. This consists in his being ablenot only to operate according to Nature and to what is usual, but also tooperate outside the normal course of Nature[poter operare secondo laNatura ed ordinario ma ed oltre, fuor le leggi di quella],in order that byforming new or being able to form other natures, other paths and othercategories with his intelligence[ingegno]by means of that liberty…hewould succeed in preserving himself as god of the Earth…. And for thatreason Providence has determined that he will be occupied in action bymeans of his hands and in contemplation by means of his intellect, so that hewill not contemplate without act and will not act without contemplation.(The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,trans. A.D.Imerti (New York,1964), p. 205)I have slightly modified the translation.27 ‘Die Natur dahin gebracht werden [muss], daß Sie selbst erweist’,Opus Paramirum(c.1530),apudWerner Kutscher,Der Wissenschaftler und sein Körper(Frankfurtam-Main, 1986), p. 111.28 Giuseppe Ceredi,Tre discorsi sopra il modo d’alzar acque da luoghi bassi(Parma,1567), pp. 5–7,apudA.C.Crombie, ‘Expectation, Modelling and Assent in theHistory of Optics: Part I. Alhazen and the Medieval Tradition’,Studies in theHistory and Philosophy of Science21 (1990) 605–33, at p. 605.29 Hans Blumenberg, work cited in note 20,ad finem,and, more generally,DieLegitimität der Neuzeit(Frankfurt-am-Main, 1983; English translation, Cambridge,Mass., MIT Press, 1986), Part 3, and Robert Lenoble,Histoire de l’idée de Nature(Paris, A.Michel, 1969), esp. pp. 311ff. As Lenoble stresses, in the perception ofNature one should never ignore or undervalue the pathos that usually presupposesand/or conveys a ‘scientific style’. In the words of F. Anderson, for Baconall statements of observation and experiment are to be written in truth andwith religious care, as if the writer were under oath and devoid of reservationof doubt and question. The record is the book of God’s works and—so far asthere may be an analogy between the majesty of divine things and thehumbleness of earthly things—is a kind of second Scripture.(Anderson [4.17], 264)30 A.Funkenstein,Theology and the Scientific Imagination(Princeton, N.J., PrincetonUniversity Press, 1986), esp. pp. 29off.; and my essay on this book ‘And Justify theWays of God to Men’,Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science21 (1990)323–39.31 For such archetypes, see Plato,Cratylus390 A,Euthydemus289 A–D,Republic601 E-602 A; and Aristotle,Politica128 a 17ff. J.Hintikka has studied thisquestion inKnowledge and the Known(Dordrecht and Boston, Reidel, 1974),passim,and has been criticized by J.L.Mackie in ‘A Reply to Hintikka’s Article“Practical versus Theoretical Reason”, in S.Körner (ed.)Practical Reason(NewHaven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 103–13. For a profoundanthropological insight into that archetype (the maker is the knowerparexcellence), cf. Mircea Eliade,Forgerons et Alchimistes(Paris, Flammarion,1956), ch. x:homo faberandhomo sapienscoincide for the faber knows in themost obvious and convincing way, i.e. by doing, making or producing things.32 cf. W.Krohn, ‘Social Change and Epistemic Thought (Reflections on the Origins ofthe Experimental Method)’, in I.Hronsky, M.Fehér and B.Dajka (eds)ScientificKnowledge Socialized(Dordrecht, 1988), pp. 165–78:‘The goal of the new science is a knowledge by which “one will becapable of all manner of works”(omnis operum potentia)in contrast withthe “felicitous contemplation”(felicitas contemplativa)of classicalphilosophy (I, 144; IV, 32). For Bacon, causes are related to knowledge justas rules are to action. The equivalence between the knowledge of causes andthe ability to produce something can be regarded in both directions: not onlyare our actions more manageable as a result of theknowledge of the laws of Nature, but the laws of Nature can beunderstood better when our point of departure is not theobservationofNature, but thevexationes artis,Nature under constraint and vexed (I, 140;IV, 29)…. This makes his [i.e. Bacon’s] turning from Aristotle that muchmore noticeable, as his claim that a condition for the understanding ofNature is our interfering with it is irreconcilable with the Aristotelian conceptof knowledge…. According to Bacon, laws have to be investigated with aview to the type ofpraeceptum(doctrine),directio(direction),deductio(guidance) one needs to produce something’(I, 229; IV, 124, pp. 171f.) Paolo Rossi had already stressed this point ([4.71],esp. Appendix ii, ‘Truth and Utility in Bacon’, pp. 148–73). For an exegesis of thecrucial termopus/work,cf. Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 135–49.33 cf. Karl-Otto Apel, ‘Das Problem einer philosophischen Theorie derRationalitätstypen’, in G.H.Schnädelbach (ed.),Rationalität(Frankfurt-am-Main,1984) pp. 15–31.34 cf. G.Buchdahl,Induction and Necessity in the Philosophy of Aristotle(London,1963); ‘Die bei Aristoteles’,Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademieder Wissenschaften(Phil.-hist. Klasse) (1964); W.Schmidt,Theorie der Induktion:Die prinzipielle Bedeutung der epag g bei Aristoteles(Munich, 1974); NellyTsouyopoulos, ‘Die Induktive Methode und das Induktionsproblem in dergriechischen Philosophie’,Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie5 (1974)94–122; J.R.Milton, ‘Induction before Hume’,British Journal for the Philosophyof Science38 (1987) 49–74, esp. pp. 58ff.; C.C.W.Taylor, ‘Aristotle’sEpistemology’, in Stephen Everson (ed.),Epistemology(Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990), pp. 116–42.35 See Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 72–82, for examples taken from Petrus Hispanus toAlbert the Great and Aquinas.36 Most notably, J.S.Mill, ‘Of Inductions Improperly So-called’,A System of Logic,Ratiocinative and Inductive(first published 1843; London, 1884), III, 2, pp. 188–99.37 cf. Wilhelm Risse,Logik der Neuzeit,2 vols (Stuttgart, Frommann, 1964), I,passim.38 cf. W.Schmidt-Biggeman,op. cit.;M.B.Hesse, ‘Francis Bacon’s Philosophy ofScience’, in Vickers [4.14], esp. pp. 212–31.39 ‘Nous nous complétons, Vérulamius et moi. Mes conseils serviront à étayer dansses grandes lignes l’explication de l’univers; ceux de Vérulamius permettront depréciser les détails pour les expériences nécessaires’,Oeuvres de Descartes,ed.G.Adam and P.Tannery, 12 vols (Paris, 1897–1910), i, 318; cf. also ii, 597f., andiii, 307. For other references amongst continental philosophers and the Cartesianperception of Bacon, cf. A.I.Sabba,Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1982), pp. 33ff., esp. pp. 170–80. For a different approach, cf. Malherbe, ‘L’induction baconienne: de l’échecmétaphysique à l’échec logique’, in Fattori [4.12], 179–200.40 F.Kambartel,Erfharung und Struktur. Bausteine zu einer Kritik des Empirismusund Formalismus(Frankfurt-am-Main, 2nd edn, 1976), pp. 81ff., on the notion ofhistoriaand the various senses ofexperientia (vaga, literata,…);cf. Malherbe,‘L’expérience et l’induction chez Bacon’, Malherbe and Pousseur [4.13], 113–34.41 Cohen,An Introduction…(cited in note 13), p. 195.42 The felicitous phraseexperimentum crucisis not Bacon’s but Boyle’s. He first usedit inDefence of the Doctrine touching the Spring and Weight of the Air(1662).Others attribute its (independent) coinage to Robert Hooke inMicrographia(1665).43 For these procedures, cf. Horton [4.43], 241–78, and Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 243–54.44 Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 257. Reproduced by kind permission of Oxford UniversityPress.45 This principle (as against the sole principle of instantiation) appears as much ininductivist epistemologies as themodus tollensprocedures; cf. J.S.Mill,A Systemof Logic,III, 10, 10, and Adolf Grünbaum, ‘Is Falsifiability the Touchstone ofScientific Rationality? Karl Popper versus Inductivism’,Boston Studies in thePhilosophy of Science39 (1976) 213–52. For a detailed account, stressing thisaspect of Bacon’sars inveniendi,cf. Peter Urbach [4.77], where Bacon is presentedas a proto-Popperian. See my criticism of this book: ‘Francis Bacon and theDisputations of the Learned’,British Journal for the Philosophy of Science42(1991) in press.46 cf. Emerton [4.32], 76–105. A comprehensive summary of the whole learneddispute is to be found in Pérez-Ramos [4.62], 116f., nn. 4 and 6.47 Peter Alexander admirably sums up the whole issue inIdeas, Qualities andCorpuscles. Locke and Boyle on the External World(Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985). For the doctrines contained in university manuals, cf. P.Reif,‘The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy’,Journal of the History of Ideas30(1968) 17–32.48 Sometimes this view was expressly linked to the Aristotelian doctrine of the fourelements: cf. Alexander on Daniel Sennert, op. cit, p. 36.49 cf. R.Macciò, ‘A proposito dell’atomismo di Francesco Bacone’,Rivista Critica diStoria della Filosofia17 (1962) 188–96; Kargon [4.47]; and especially the eruditeresearches of J.Rees, ‘Francis Bacon’s Semiparacelsian Cosmology and the GreatInstoration’,Ambix22 (1975) 161–73; ‘Atomism and Subtlety in Francis Bacon’sPhilosophy’,Ambix37 (1981) 27–37. Compare my nuanced criticism of Rees’sapproach in ‘Bacon in the Right Spirit’,Annals of Science42 (1985) 603–11.50 Vickers, in Fattori [4.12], 281–314.51 Jonathan Swift,Gulliver’s Travels(first published 1726; London, Dent, 1970), PartIII, ch. V, pp. 190–205. On the sources of the Academy of Lagado, cf.A. E.Case,‘Personal and Political: Satire inGulliver’s Travels’(1945), inJonathan Swift,ed.D.Donoghue (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971), pp. 335ff. On contemporarycharges of sterility against the new science, cf. M.Hunter,Science and Society inRestoration England(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 188–93.52 cf. Lenoble (cited in note 29), pp. 217–77.53 See, amongst other places, Cohen,An Introduction…(cited in note 13), pp. 4–12,145–75.54Erewhon(first published 1872; London, 1951) ‘The Book of the Machines’,ch. XXIIII, pp. 142ff. The literature concerning the political and social implicationsof the Baconian project is immense; cf. W.Leiss,The Domination of Nature(NewYork, Braziller, 1972), pp. 45–71; J.R.Ravetz, ‘Francis Bacon and the Reform ofPhilosophy’ (1972), inThe Merger of Knowledge with Power. Essays in CriticalScience(London, 1990), pp. 116–36; Timothy Paterson, ‘Bacon’s Myth ofOrpheus. Power as a Goal of Science inOf the Wisdom of the Ancients’,Interpretation16 (1989) 429–44. For a different philosophical idiolect, cf.T.W.Adorno and M.Horkheimer,Dialectic of Enlightenment,trans. J. Cumming(first published 1944; New York, Herder and Herder, 1972).BIBLIOGRAPHYStandard editions4.1The Works of Francis Bacon:Latin and English, ed. with introduction andcommentaries by J.Spedding, R.L.Ellis and D.D.Heath (first published London,1857–74; reprinted Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Friedrich Frommann, 1961–3). Thephilosophical works are in vols 1–5;De Sapientia Veterum,mistakenly considered asa literary work, is in vol. 6 with theEssays.The remaining volumes (7–14) aredevoted to the literary and professional works, letters and life. This is the standardedition and, although there is an American counterpart (Boston, 1860–4), itspagination is generally used.Selections and separate works4.2Francis Bacon: Selections with Essays,by M. and S.R.Gardiner, ed. P.E. andE.F.Matheson, Oxford, Clarendon, 1964.4.3Francis Bacon: A Selection of his Works,ed. S.Warhaft, New York, Odyssey, 1970.4.4Francis Bacon: Selected Writings,introduction and notes by H.G.Dick, New York,Modern Library, 1955.4.5The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis,ed. Arthur Johnson, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, 1974; reprinted, 1980, 1986.4.6Novum Organum,ed. with introduction and notes by Thomas Fowler, Oxford, 1878.This gives the Latin text only, but is surely the best edition.4.7The New Organon and Related Writings,ed. F.Anderson, Indianapolis, Ind., Bobbs-Merrill, 1960.Bibliographies and concordancesBibliographies4.8 Gibson, G.W.Francis Bacon: A Bibliography of his Works and of Baconiana to theyear 1750,Oxford, Scrivener Press, 1950; Supplement 1959.4.9 Rossi, P. ‘Per una bibliografia degli scritti su Francesco Bacone’,Rivista Critica diStoria di Filosofia12 (1957) 75–89; Appendix,Rivista Critica di Storia di Filosofia29 (1974) 44–51.4.10 Totok, W.Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie,Frankfurt-am-Main,Klostermann, 1964–81, vol. 2, pp. 473–85. This is perhaps the best bibliographicalessay as regards the distribution of works on Bacon according to specific headingsand books.Concordances4.11 Fattori, M.Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone,Rome, Ateneo eBizarri, 2 vols, 1980.Books and articles dealing with Bacon’s philosophy andinfluenceCollective works4.12 Fattori, M. (ed.)Francis Bacon. Terminologia e fortuna nel xvii secolo,Rome, 1984.4.13 Malherbe, M. and Pousseur, J.-M. (eds)Francis Bacon. Science et méthode,Paris,Vrin, 1985.4.14 Vickers, B. (ed.)Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon,London,Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972. With further bibliography.4.15Les Etudes Philosophiques,1985 (monograph on Bacon).4.16Revue Internationale de Philosophie,40 (1986) (monograph on Bacon).Individual authors4.17 Anderson, F.The Philosophy of Francis Bacon,Chicago, Ill., University of ChicagoPress, 1948.4.18 Berns, L. ‘Francis Bacon and the Conquest of Nature’,Interpretation7 (1978)36–48.4.19 Bierman, J. ‘Science and Society in the New Atlantis and other RenaissanceUtopias’,Publications of the Modern Language Association of America78 (1963)492–500.4.20 Broad, C.D. ‘The Philosophy of Francis Bacon’ (1926),Ethics and the History ofPhilosophy,London, Routledge, 1952, 117–43.4.21 Buchdahl, G. ‘The Natural Philosophie’, in R.Hall (ed.)The Making of ModernScience ,Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1960, 9–16.4.22 Cohen, L.J. ‘Some Historical Remarks on the Baconian Conception of Probability’,Journal of the History of Ideas41 (1980) 219–31.4.23 Cohen, M.R. ‘Bacon and the Inductive Method’,Studies in Philosophy and Science,New York, Holt, 1949, 99–106.4.24 Crescini, A.Il problema metodologico alle origine della scienza moderna,Rome,Edizioni dell’Atenco, 1972.4.25 Crombie, A.C.Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition,London, 1991.4.26 Dangelmayr, S.Methode und System: Wissenschaftsklassifikation bei Bacon, Hobbesund Locke,Meisenheim-am-Glan, Anton Hain, 1974.4.27 DeMas, E.Francis Bacon,Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1978.4.28 Dickie, W.M. ‘A Comparison of the Scientific Method and Achievement of Aristotleand Bacon’,Philosophical Review31 (1922) 471–94.4.29 Dickie, W.M. ‘“Form” and “Simple Nature” in Bacon’s Philosophy’,The Monist33(1923) 428–37.4.30 Dieckmann, H. ‘The Influence of Francis Bacon on Diderot’sL’Interprétation de laNature’,Romanic Review34 (1943) 305–30.4.31 Dieckmann, H. ‘La storia naturale da Bacone a Diderot’,Rivista di Filosofia67(1976) 217–43.4.32 Dijksterhuis, E.J.The Mechanisation of the World Picture,trans. C. Dikshoorn,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1961.4.33 Ducasse, C.J. ‘Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science’, in E.H.Madden (ed.)Theories of Scientific Method from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century,Seattle, Wash., University of Washington Press, 1966, 50–74.4.34 Emerton, N.E.The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form,Ithaca, N.Y., CornellUniversity Press, 1984.4.35 Farrington, B.Francis Bacon: Philosopher of Industrial Science,London, Lawrence& Wishart, 1951.4.36 Farrington, B.The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on its Development from1603 to 1609,Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1964.4.37 Fattori, M. ‘Des natures simples chez Francis Bacon’,Recherches sur le XVIIesiècle5 (1982) 67–75.4.38 Fisch, H. and Jones, H.W. ‘Bacon’s Influence on Sprat’s History of the RoyalSociety’,Modern Language Quarterly12 (1951) 399–406.4.39 Gilbert, N.W.Renaissance Concepts of Method,New York, Columbia UniversityPress, 1960.4.40 Harrison, C.T. ‘Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient Atomists’,Harvard Studiesand Notes on Literature15 (1933) 191–218.4.41 Hattaway, M. ‘Bacon and “Knowledge Broken”: Limits for Scientific Method’,Journal of the History of Ideas40 (1979) 183–97.4.42 Hill, C.The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution,Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, 1965.4.43 Horton, M. ‘In Defence of Francis Bacon: A Criticism of the Critics of the InductiveMethod’,Studies in the History and the Philosophy of Science4 (1973) 241–78.4.44 Hossfeld, P. ‘Francis Bacon und die Entwicklung der naturwissenschaftlichenMethode’,Philosophia Naturalis4 (1957) 140–50.4.45 Jardine, L.Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse,Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1974.4.46 Jones, R.S.Ancients and Moderns,St Louis, Mo., Washington University Press,1961.4.47 Kargon, R.Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton,Oxford, Clarendon, 1966.4.48 Kotarbi′ ski, T. ‘The Development of the Main Problem in the Methodology ofFrancis Bacon’,Studia Philosophica (Lodz)1 (1935) 107–37.4.49 Lamacchia, A. ‘Una questione dibattuta: probabili fonti dell’ enciclopediabaconiana’ ,Rivista Critica di Storia delta Filosofia39 (1984) 725–40.4.50 Larsen, R.E. ‘The Aristotelianism of Bacon’sNovum Organum’, Journal of theHistory of Ideas23 (1962) 435–50.4.51 Lemni, C.W.Classical Deities in Bacon: A Study in Mythological Symbolism,Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933.4.52 Levi, A.Il Pensiero de Francesco Bacone,Turin, Paravia, 1925.4.53 Linguiti, G.I. ‘Induzione e deduzione: riesame del Bacone popperiano’,Rivista diFilosofia69 (1978) 499–515.4.54 Luxembourg, L.K.Francis Bacon and Denis Diderot: Philosophers of Science,Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 1967.4.55 Maccio, R. ‘A proposito dell’ atomismo nelNovum Organumdi Bacone’,RivistaCritica di Storia delta Filosofia17 (1962) 188–96.4.56 McRae, R.The Problem of the Unity of the Sciences from Bacon to Kant,Toronto,University of Toronto Press, 1961.4.57 Merton, R.K.Science, Technology and Society in 17th-century England(firstpublished in 1938 as Part 2 of vol. 4 ofOsiris;new edn, New York, Fertig, 1970).4.58 Milton, J.R. ‘Induction before Hume’,British Journal for the Philosophy of Science38 (1987) 49–74.4.59 Morrison, J.C. ‘Philosophy and History in Bacon’,Journal of the History of Ideas38(1977) 585–606.4.60 Park, K., Danston, L.J. and Galison, P.L. ‘Bacon, Galileo and Descartes onImagination and Analogy’,Isis75 (1984) 287–326.4.61 Penrose, S.B.L.The Reputation and Influence of Francis Bacon in the SeventeenthCentury,New York, Columbia University Press, 1934.4.62 Pérez-Ramos, A.Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s KnowledgeTradition,Oxford, Clarendon, 1988.4.63 Popkin, R.The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza,Berkeley, Calif.,University of California Press, revised edn., 1979.4.64 Primack, M. ‘Outline of a Reinterpretation of Francis Bacon’s Philosophy’,Journalof the History of Philosophy5 (1965) 122–33.4.65 Quinton, A.Francis Bacon,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980.4.66 Rattansi, P.M. ‘The Intellectual Origins of the Royal Society’,Notes and Records ofthe Royal Society23 (1968) 129–43.4.67 Rees, G. ‘Francis Bacon’s Semi-Paracelsian Cosmology and the Great Instauration’,Ambix22 (1975) 161–73.4.68 Rees, G. ‘Atomism and Subtlety in Francis Bacon’s Philosophy’,Annals of Science37 (1980) 549–71.4.69 Righini-Bonelli, M.L. ‘Trends of Interpretation of Seventeenth-Century Science’, inM.L.Righini-Bonelli and W.R.Shea (eds)Reason, Experiment and Mysticism in theScientific Revolution,New York, 1975, 1–15.4.70 Rossi, P.Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science(1st edn (in Italian), 1957), trans.S.Rabinovitch, London, Routledge, 1968.4.71 Rossi, P.Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Modern Era(first published asI filosofi e le macchine,1962), trans. S.Attanasio, New York, Harper & Row, 1970.4.72 Sargent, R.M. ‘Robert Boyle’s Baconian Inheritance: A Response to Laudan’sCartesian Thesis’,Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science17 (1986)469–86.4.73 Schmidt, G. ‘Ist Wissen Macht? Uber die Aktualität von BaconsInstauratio Magna’,Kantstudien58 (1967) 481–98.4.74 Schuhl, P.M.Machinisme et Philosophie,Paris, Presses Universitaires de France,2nd edn, 1947.4.75 Shapiro, B.Probability and Certainty in 17th-Century England; A Study of theRelationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature,Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1983.4.76 Thorndike, L.History of Magic and Experimental Science,New York, Macmillan, 8vols, 1923–58.4.77 Urbach, P.Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Science,La Salle, Ill., Open Court, 1987.4.78 Vasoli, C.L’enciclopedismo del Seicento,Naples, 1978.4.79 Viano, C. ‘Esperienza e Natura nella filosofia di Francesco Bacone’,Rivista diFilosofia45 (1954) 291–313.4.80 Wallace, K.Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man,Urbana, Ill., University of IllinoisPress, 1967.4.81 Walton, C. ‘Ramus and Bacon on Method’,Journal of the History of Philosophy9(1971) 289–302.4.82 Webster, C.The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform (1626–1660),London, Holmes & Meier, 1975.4.83 Weinberger, J. ‘Science and Rule in Bacon’s Utopia: An Introduction to the Readingof theNew Atlantis’, American Political Science Review70 (1976) 865–85.4.84 White, H.B. ‘The Influence of Francis Bacon on thephilosophes’, Studies onVoltaire and the 18th Century27 (1963) 1849–69.4.85 White, H.B.Peace among the Willows: the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon,The Hague, Nijhoff, 1968.4.86 Wolff, E.Francis Bacon und seine Quellen,2 vols, Berlin, 1913; Liechtenstein,Nendeln, 1977.4.87 Wood, N. ‘The Baconian Character of Locke’s Essay’,Studies in the History andPhilosophy of Science6 (1970) 43–84.4.88 Wood, P.B. ‘Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat’s History of the RoyalSociety’,British Journal of the History of Science13 (1980) 1926.N.B. This bibliography does not include all the books and articles to whichallusion has been made in this chapter, since many of them did not dealspecifically with Bacon’s philosophy or, if they did, their reference has alreadybeen given.