Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.
Former Principal, A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) devoted himself to law and polities, although, so he himself tells us, his chief interests lay along the lines of the studies to which he gave his leisure hours. Important offices and high honors were conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth and King James I, — he was made Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, and became Lord Chancellor. In 1621 he was accused of having accepted gifts from litigants in his official capacity as a judge, an offense which he confessed but which he declared had never influenced his decisions. He was found guilty, sentenced to imprisonment, heavily fined, and deprived of office, but received the king’s pardon, and retired to private life.
In a way Bacon’s descent from political power was a fortunate fall, for it represented a liberation from the bondage of public life resulting in a remarkable final burst of literary and scientific activity. As Renaissance scholar and Bacon expert Brian Vickers has reminded us, Bacon’s earlier works, impressive as they are, were essentially products of his “spare time.” It was only during his last five years that he was able to concentrate exclusively on writing and produce, in addition to a handful of minor pieces:
- Two substantial volumes of history and biography, The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh and The History of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.
- De Augmentis Scientiarum (an expanded Latin version of his earlier Advancement of Learning).
- The final 1625 edition of his Essayes, or Counsels.
- The remarkable Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History in Ten Centuries (a curious hodge-podge of scientific experiments, personal observations, speculations, ancient teachings, and analytical discussions on topics ranging from the causes of hiccups to explanations for the shortage of rain in Egypt). Artificially divided into ten “centuries” (that is, ten chapters, each consisting of one hundred items), the work was apparently intended to be included in Part Three of the Magna Instauratio.
- His utopian science-fiction novel The New Atlantis, which was published in unfinished form a year after his death.
- Various parts of his unfinished magnum opus Magna Instauratio (or Great Instauration), including a “Natural History of Winds” and a “Natural History of Life and Death.”
These late productions represented the capstone of a writing career that spanned more than four decades and encompassed virtually an entire curriculum of literary, scientific, and philosophical studies.
Among the English predecessors of Bacon were: Everard Digby (+1592), professor of logic at Cambridge, who aroused an interest in the study of philosophy in his country. His Neoplatonic doctrine, which he combined with Cabalism, was opposed by Sir William Temple (1553-1626), who followed the logic of Petrus Ramus and antagonized Aristotle.
Francis Bacon is, in many respects, a typical representative of the new movement. He is opposed to the ancient authorities, to Aristotle and Qreek philosophy no less than to the barren philosophy of the School. The very failures of the past inspire him with the hope and belief that an era of glorious achievement is at hand, that great things are going to happen, that with the abandonment of the fruitless science of the past the face of the earth and of society will be changed.
Bacon’s struggle to overcome intellectual blockades and the dogmatic slumber of his age and of earlier periods had to be fought on many fronts. Very early on he criticized not only Plato, Aristotle and the Aristotelians, but also humanists and Renaissance scholars such as Paracelsus and Bernardino Telesio.
Bacon did not advance the cause of natural science by his own experiments nor, indeed, was he sufficiently acquainted with mathematics to appreciate the work of the great astronomers of the new era. And it can hardly be said that his theory of method exercised an influence on experimental science; science was too far along for that : in his own country William Gilbert (1540-1603), the well-known author of the book De magneie,, had employed the inductive method in his researches before the appearance of Bacon’s writings on the subject. He does, however, deserve the title of the trumpeter of his time, which he applied to himself, for he gave conscious expression to the new scientific spirit. He understood and emphasized the importance of systematic and methodical observation and experimentation in natural science; the other and most important phase of it, mathematics, he mentions and considers essential, but fails to make use of in his theory, simply because he does not know how.
The “Distempers” of Learning
Bacon, in the first book of the Advancement, goes on to refer to vanities as the three “distempers” of learning and identifies them as “fantastical learning,” “contentious learning,” and “delicate learning”
By fantastical learning (“vain imaginations”) Bacon had in mind what we would today call pseudo-science: i.e., a collection of ideas that lack any real or substantial foundation, that are professed mainly by occultists and charlatans, In Bacon’s day such “imaginative science” was familiar in the form of astrology, natural magic, and alchemy.
By contentious learning (“vain altercations”) Bacon was referring mainly to Aristotelian philosophy and theology and especially to the Scholastic tradition of logical hair-splitting and metaphysical quibbling.
Delicate learning (“vain affectations”) was Bacon’s label for the new humanism insofar as it seemed concerned not with the actual recovery of ancient texts or the retrieval of past knowledge but merely with the revival of Ciceronian rhetorical embellishments and the reproduction of classical prose style.
In short, in Bacon’s view the distempers impede genuine intellectual progress by beguiling talented thinkers into fruitless, illusory, or purely self-serving ventures. What is needed – and this is a theme reiterated in all his later writings on learning and human progress – is a program to re-channel that same creative energy into socially useful new discoveries.
Theory of the Idols
In Redargutio Philosophiarum Bacon reflects on his method, but he also criticizes prejudices and false opinions, especially the system of speculation established by theologians, as an obstacle to the progress of science.
Bacon deals with the idols in the Second Book of The Advancement of Learning, where he discusses Arts intellectual (Invention, Judgment, Memory, Tradition). In his paragraph on judgment he refers to proofs and demonstrations, especially to induction and invention. When he comes to Aristotle’s treatment of the syllogism, he reflects on the relation between sophistically fallacies Whereas induction, invention, and judgment presuppose “the same action of the mind”, this is not true for proof in the syllogism. Bacon, therefore, prefers his own interpretatio naturae, repudiating elenches as modes of sophistical ‘juggling’ in order to persuade others in redargutions (“degenerate and corrupt use … for caption and contradiction”). There is no finding without proof and no proof without finding. But this is not true for the syllogism, in which proof (syllogism: judgment of the consequent) and invention (of the ‘mean’ or middle term) are distinct.
. The complete doctrine of detection of fallacies, according to Bacon, contains three segments:
- Sophistical fallacies, Bacon praises Aristotle for his excellent handling of the matter, but he also mentions Plato honorably.
- Fallacies of interpretation, refer to “Adventitious Conditions or Adjuncts of Essences”, similar to the predicaments, open to physical or logical inquiry. He focuses his attention on the logical handling when he relates the detection of fallacies of interpretation to the wrong use of common and general notions.
- False appearances or Idols. Bacon finds a place for his idols, when he refers to the detection of false appearances as the deepest fallacies of the human mind: For they corrupt and ill-ordered predisposition of mind, which as it were perverts and infects all the anticipations of the intellect.
According to Aphorism XXIII of the First Book, Bacon makes a distinction between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine mind: whereas the former are for him nothing more than “certain empty dogmas”, the latter show “the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature” (Bacon IV [1901], 51).
In Book I of the New Organon (Aphorisms 39-68), Bacon introduces his famous doctrine of the “idols.” These are characteristic errors, natural tendencies, or defects that beset the mind and prevent it from achieving a full and accurate understanding of nature. Bacon points out that recognizing and counteracting the idols is as important to the study of nature as the recognition and refutation of bad arguments is to logic. Incidentally, he uses the word “idol” – from the Greek eidolon (“image” or “phantom”) – not in the sense of a false god or heathen deity but rather in the sense employed in Epicurean physics. Thus a Baconian idol is a potential deception or source of misunderstanding, especially one that clouds or confuses our knowledge of external reality. Bacon also listed what he called the Idols (false images) of the mind – examples of what is now called cognitive bias. He described these as things which obstructed the path of correct scientific reasoning. Idols are productions of the human imagination (caused by the crooked mirror of the human mind) and thus are nothing more than “untested generalities” (Malherbe 1996, 80).
Bacon’s doctrine of the idols not only represents a stage in the history of theories of error (Brandt 1979) but also functions as an important theoretical element within the rise of modern empiricism. According to Bacon, the human mind is not a tabula rasa. Instead of an ideal plane for receiving an image of the world in toto, it is a crooked mirror, on account of implicit distortions (Bacon IV [1901], 428–34). He does not sketch a basic epistemology but underlines that the images in our mind right from the beginning do not render an objective picture of the true objects. Consequently, we have to improve our mind, i.e., free it from the idols, before we start any knowledge acquisition.
Bacon identifies four different classes of idol. Each arises from a different source, and each presents its own special hazards and difficulties.
Idols of the Tribe
The Idols of the Tribe have their origin in the production of false concepts due to human nature, because the structure of human understanding is like a crooked mirror, which causes distorted reflections (of things in the external world).
These are the natural weaknesses and tendencies common to human nature. Because they are innate, they cannot be completely eliminated, but only recognized and compensated for. Some of Bacon’s examples are: Our senses – which are inherently dull and easily deceivable. Our tendency to discern more order in phenomena than is actually there. As Bacon points out, we are apt to find similitude where there is actually singularity, regularity where there is actually randomness, etc. Our tendency towards “wishful thinking.” According to Bacon, we have a natural inclination to accept, believe, and even prove what we would prefer to be true. Our tendency to rush to conclusions and make premature judgments .
Idols of the Cave
Unlike the idols of the tribe, which are common to all human beings, those of the cave vary from individual to individual. They arise, that is to say, not from nature but from culture and thus reflect the peculiar distortions, prejudices, and beliefs that we are all subject to owing to our different family backgrounds, childhood experiences, education, training, gender, religion, social class, etc. Examples include: Special allegiance to a particular discipline or theory. High esteem for a few select authorities .A tendency to reduce or confine phenomena within the terms of our own narrow training or discipline. The Idols of the Cave consist of conceptions or doctrines which are dear to the individual who cherishes them, without possessing any evidence of their truth. These idols are due to the preconditioned system of every individual, comprising education, custom, or accidental or contingent experiences.
Idols of the Market Place
These idols are based on false conceptions which are derived from public human communication. They enter our minds quietly by a combination of words and names, so that it comes to pass that not only does reason govern words, but words react on our understanding.
These are hindrances to clear thinking that arise, Bacon says, from the “intercourse and association of men with each other.” The main culprit here is language, though not just common speech, but also (and perhaps particularly) the special discourses, vocabularies, and jargons of various academic communities and disciplines. He points out that “the idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds”: “they are either names of things that do not exist” (e.g., the crystalline spheres of Aristotelian cosmology) or faulty, vague, or misleading names for things that do exist (according to Bacon, abstract qualities and value terms – e.g., “moist,” “useful,” etc. – can be a particular source of confusion).
Idols of the Theatre
According to the insight that the world is a stage, the Idols of the Theatre are prejudices stemming from received or traditional philosophical systems. These systems resemble plays in so far as they render fictional worlds, which were never exposed to an experimental check or to a test by experience. The idols of the theatre thus have their origin in dogmatic philosophy or in wrong laws of demonstration.
Bacon ends his presentation of the idols in Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism LXVIII, with the remark that men should abjure and renounce the qualities of idols, “and the understanding [must be] thoroughly freed and cleansed” (Bacon IV [1901], 69). He discusses the idols together with the problem of information gained through the senses, which must be corrected by the use of ..
Like the idols of the cave, those of the theatre are culturally acquired rather than innate. And although the metaphor of a theatre suggests an artificial imitation of truth, as in drama or fiction, Bacon makes it clear that these idols derive mainly from grand schemes or systems of philosophy – and especially from three particular types of philosophy:
- Sophistical Philosophy – that is, philosophical systems based only on a few casually observed instances and constructed mainly out of abstract argument and speculation.
- Empirical Philosophy – that is, a philosophical system ultimately based on a single key insight , which is then erected into a model or paradigm to explain phenomena of all kinds.
- Superstitious Philosophy – this is Bacon’s phrase for any system of thought that mixes theology and philosophy.
As early as Temporis partus masculus, Bacon warns the student of empirical science not to tackle the complexities of his subject without purging the mind of its idols: On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new. (Farrington 1964, 72)
The Inductive Approach
Not everyone from 300 B.C. to 1600 A.D. was willing to bow to the authority of Aristotle. Many of Aristotle’s arguments were faulty, but where did he go wrong, and what was the right way to proceed?
There were no subtle logical errors in Aristotle’s use of the deductive method. The problem was that the deductive method, while wildly successful in mathematics, did not fit well with scientific investigations of nature.
Bacon’s manuscripts already mention the doctrine of the idols as a necessary condition for constituting scientia operativa. In Cogitata et Visa he compares deductive logic as used by the scholastics to a spider’s web, which is drawn out of its own entrails, whereas the bee is introduced as an image of scientia operativa. Like a bee, the empiricist, by means of his inductive method, collects the natural matter or products and then works them up into knowledge in order to produce honey, which is useful for healthy nutrition.
Bacon’s philosophy was the opposite. Leading up to and during Bacon’s time, philosophies existed that were rooted in pure faith and not so much in reason; these outdated philosophies were promoted by the church [Landry]. The fruitlessness of science and philosophy in the past, Bacon thinks, has been due to the absence of a proper method. The unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself possess but little power. We must devise a new way of reaching knowledge, a new machine or organ for the mind, a new logic, a novum organum. The old logic is useless for the discovery of the sciences, it assists in confirming and rendering inveterate the errors founded on vulgar notions rather than in seeking after truth.
The foundation is natural science, the method induction, and the goal the art of invention. The reason so little progress has been made in twenty-five hundred years, is that the right methods of acquiring knowledge have not been followed. Some use the method of demonstration, but they start from principles which have been hastily formed or taken on trust and are uncertain. Others follow the way of sense, but the senses, left to themselves, are faulty; still others despair of all knowledge, but this attitude, too, is dogmatic and unsatisfactory. We must begin the work anew and raise or rebuild the sciences, arts, and all human knowledge from a firm and solid basis. This is the great Instauration.
in order to produce effects, we should know causes. Our present syllogistic methods will not avail; our present sciences are but peculiar arrangements of matters already discovered. The syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are signs of notions. Hence, if the notions are confused and carelessly abstracted from things, — and that is the case, — there is no solidity in the whole superstructure. The notions, principles, and axioms used in the syllogism are all based on experience, — as indeed all principles or axioms are, — but on vague and faulty experience; they are hasty generalizations from experience. Our hope, then, is genuine induction. We must continually raise up propositions by degrees and in the last place come to the most general and well-defined axioms, in an orderly and methodical way. That is, we must combine the experimental and the rational faculties.
But before describing the method in detail, our reformer insists that the mind clear itself of all false opinions, prejudices, or idols, of which there are four kinds. The eye of the mind, he tells us, must never be taken off from the things themselves, but receive their images truly as they are. The past has done nothing; its methods, foundations, and results were wrong; we must begin all over again, free our minds of transmitted and inherited prejudices and opinions, go to the things themselves instead of following opinions and dealing in words, — in short, do our own thinking.
Bacon is most commonly known for advocating the inductive approach to science. He argued that there had been limited progress over the ages due to the fact that scholastic philosophers altered their findings on nature to meet the requirements of scripture. Bacon delineated the principles of the inductive thinking method, while the term “method” goes back to the times of Aristotle, Bacon constituted a breakthrough in the approach to science. He denounced the scholastic thinkers for their attachment to Aristotelian doctrines, which he felt prevented independent thinking and the acquisition of new ideas regarding nature. He argued that to improve the quality of human life, the advancement of science should not depend on ancient texts, and that old authorities should be considered redundant and unnecessary. He believed that knowledge should be pursued in a new and organized way. His idea of an inductive approach included the careful observation of nature with a systematic accumulation of data to draw upon. New laws were soon created based on the knowledge of particular findings through testing and experimentation.
The inductive method (usually called the scientific method) is the deductive method “turned upside down”. The deductive method starts with a few true statements (axioms) with the goal of proving many true statements (theorems) that logically follow from them. The inductive method starts with many observations of nature, with the goal of finding a few, powerful statements about how nature works (laws and theories).
In the deductive method, logic is the authority. If a statement follows logically from the axioms of the system, it must be true. In the scientific method, observation of nature is the authority. If an idea conflicts with what happens in nature, the idea must be changed or abandoned.
Induction does not consist in simple enumeration, —that is a childish thing. The aim of human knowledge is to discover the forms, or true differences, or the source of emanation, of a given nature or quality. By form Bacon means not what the realists meant, not abstract forms or ideas. Matter rather than forms, he tells us, should be the object of our attention ; nothing exists in nature besides individual bodies which act according to fixed law. In philosophy the investigation, discovery, and explanation of this very law is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. This law he calls the form, a term which had come into general use; Telesio, whom Bacon mentions, speaks of heat and cold as active forms of nature. The form of heat is the law of heat, it is what determines or regulates beat wherever heat is found, it is what heat depends on. Whoever knows the forms, understands the unity of nature in substances most unlike; he knows what in nature is constant and eternal and universal, and opens broad roads to human power such as human thought can scarcely comprehend or anticipate.
Bacon declares that the form or substantial self of heat is motion, it is the motion of the small particles of the body. The investigation of forms (causes) which are eternal and immutable constitutes metaphysics; the investigation of efficient cause and matter, and of the latent process, and latent configurations, constitutes physics. The application of the knowledge of forms or fundamental laws of nature leads to the highest kind of invention. Bacon calls it magic, it is practical metaphysics. The application of knowledge of material and efficient causes is mechanics or practical physics.
The most important causes or laws, then, which science has to discover are forms, and these are found by induction.
(1) The form of a nature or quality (heat, for example) is such that, given the form, the quality infallibly follows. It is, therefore, always present when the quality is present, and universally implies it, and is constantly inherent in it.
(2) Again, the form is such that if it be taken away, the quality infallibly vanishes. Hence, it is always absent when the quality is absent, and implies its absence, and inheres in nothing else.
(3) Lastly, the true form is such that it deduces the given quality from some source of being which is inherent in more qualities, and which is better known in the natural order of things than the form itself.
All this gives us the clue to our method of procedure.
(1) A quality being given, we must, first, consider all the known instances which agree in the same quality though in substances the most unlike .
(2) Then we must review the instances in which the given quality is wanting (the so-called negative instances). The negatives should be subjoined to the affirmatives, and the absence of the given quality inquired of in those subjects only that are most akin to the others in which it is present and forthcoming.
.(3) Then we take the cases in which the object of our inquiry is present in a greater or less degree, either by comparing its increase and decrease in the same object, or its degree in different objects.
Bacon mentions eleven other helps to the mind in discovering- forms, each of which has its name : rejection, first vintage, prerogative instances, etc., but works out only three.
System of Sciences
Within the history of occidental philosophy and science, Bacon identifies only three revolutions or periods of learning: the heyday of the Greeks and that of the Romans and Western Europe in his own time. This meager result stimulated his ambition to establish a new system of the sciences. This tendency can already be seen in his early manuscripts, but is also apparent in his first major book, The Advancement of Learning. In this work Bacon presents a systematic survey of the extant realms of knowledge, combined with meticulous descriptions of deficiencies, leading to his new classification of knowledge. In The Advancement a new function is given to philosophia prima, the necessity of which he had indicated in the Novum Organum. In both texts this function is attributed to philosophia naturalis, the basis for his concept of the unity of the sciences and thus of materialism.
Natural science is divided by Bacon into physics and metaphysics. The former investigates variable and particular causes, the latter reflects on general and constant ones, for which the term form is used. Forms are more general than the four Aristotelian causes and that is why Bacon’s discussion of the forms of substances as the most general properties of matter is the last step for the human mind when investigating nature. Metaphysics is distinct from philosophia prima. The latter marks the position in the system where general categories of a general theory of science are treated as (1) universal categories of thought, (2) relevant for all disciplines. Final causes are discredited, since they lead to difficulties in science and tempt us to amalgamate theological and teleological points of doctrine. At the summit of Bacon’s pyramid of knowledge are the laws of nature (the most general principles). At its base the pyramid starts with observations, moves on to invariant relations and then to more inclusive correlations until it reaches the stage of forms. The process of generalization ascends from natural history via physics towards metaphysics, whereas accidental correlations and relations are eliminated by the method of exclusion. It must be emphasized that metaphysics has a special meaning for Bacon. This concept (1) excludes the infinity of individual experience by generalization with a teleological focus and (2) opens our mind to generate more possibilities for the efficient application of general laws.
Bacon held that mankind must begin the work of science anew. It was natural, under the circumstances, that he did not offer a complete theory of the universe himself; his office was to stake out the ground and to point the way to new achievements.
To this end he planned his great work,consisting of six parts, only two of which were completed : the Encyclopedia or Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. He divides the field of knowledge, or ” the intellectual globe,” into history, poetry and philosophy, according to the faculties of the mind (memory, imagination, and reason), and subdivides each into numerous specialist branches.
Philosophy is the work of reason ; it deals with abstract notions derived from impressions of sense; and in the composition and division of these notions, according to the law of nature and fact, its business lies. It embraces : primary philosophy, revealed theology, natural theology, metaphysics, physics, mechanics, magic, mathematics, psychology, and ethics. Primary philosophy busies itself with the axioms common to several sciences, with what we should now call laws of thought and categories. Metaphysics has two functions: to discover the eternal and immutable forms of bodies and to discuss purposes, ends, or final causes. Final causes have no place in physics ; Democritus never wasted any time on them, hence, Bacon declares, he penetrates farther into nature than Plato and Aristotle, who were ever inculcating them. The doctrine of final causes has no practical value, but is a barren thing, or as a virgin consecrated to God. Mathematics is a branch of metaphysics, — being a science of quantity, which is one of the essential, most abstract, and separable forms of matter. Mathematics and logic both ought to be handmaids of physics, but instead they have come to domineer over physics. Mathematics is of great importance to metaphysics, mechanics, and magic.
The philosophy of man comprises human and civil, or political, philosophy. In the former we consider man separate, in the latter joined in society. Human philosophy studies of Man connection. Among its topics are the miseries and the prerogatives or excellencies of the human race, physiognomy and the interpretation of natural dreams, the effect of bodily states on mind (madness, insanity) and the influence of mind on body, the proper seat and habitation of each faculty of the mind in the body and its organs, also ” medicine, cosmetic, athletic, and voluptuary.”
The human soul has a divine or rational part and an irrational part All problems relating to the former must be handed over to religion. The sensitive or produced soul is corporeal, attenuated by heat and rendered invisible, and resides chiefly in the head (in perfect animals), running along the nerves and refreshed and repaired by the spirituous blood of the arteries. The faculties of the soul are understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, with, and all those with which logic and ethics are concerned. The origins of these faculties must be physically treated. The questions of voluntary motion and sensibility are interesting. How can so minute and subtle a breath as the (material) soul put in motion bodies so gross and hard.
Bacon finds a manifest power of perception in most bodies, and a kind of appetite to choose what is agreeable, and to avoid what is disagreeable to them (the loadstone attracts iron, one drop of water runs into another). A body feels the impulse of another body, perceives the removal of any body that with held it; perception is diffused through all nature. But how far, he inquires, can perception ‘be caused without sense (consciousness) t We see how hard it was for the new thinker to get the old medieval notions of an animated nature out of his bones.
Logic treats of the understanding and reason; and ethics, of the will, appetite, and affections; the one produces resolutions, the other actions. The logical arts are inquiry or invention, examination or judgment, custody or memory, elocution or delivery. The study of induction belongs to the art of judgment.
Ethics describes the nature of the good and prescribes rules for conforming to it. Man is prompted by selfish and social impulses (as later writers called them). Individual or self good, self-preservation and defence, differs entirely from the social good, though they may sometimes coincide. The social good is called duty. It is the business of the science of government to discover the fountains of justice and public good.
Philosophy, in the broad sense, is the apex of the pyramid of knowledge. It is founded on the just, pure, and strict inquiry of all the subjects of study already proposed by Bacon. His purpose was not to offer a universal system, but ” to lay more firmly the foundations and extend more widely the limits.
Metaphysics of the power and greatness of man.” It did not Theoloev appear to him that the time had come for attempting a theory of the universe ; indeed, he seemed to be doubtful of the possibility of reaching such knowledge at all.
Theology he divides into natural and inspired or revealed. Natural theology is that knowledge, or rather rudiment of knowledge, concerning God, which may be obtained by the light of nature and the contemplation of his creatures. The bounds of this knowledge, truly drawn, are that it suffices to refute and convince atheism, and to give information as to the law of nature, but not to establish religion. ” It is an assumed truth and conclusion of experience that a little or superficial knowledge
of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism; but a farther proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion.” Yet, such a study does not yield a perfect knowledge of God; nor can we adapt the heavenly mysteries to our reason. Knowledge derived from the senses, as all science is derived, cannot help us here : ” the senses are like the sun, which displays the face of the earth, but shuts up that of the heavens.”
The cleavage which Bacon makes between theology and philosophy is the inheritance of the closing Middle Ages ; by relegating the dogmas to a separate territory, the field was left free for philosophy. His attitude toward theology is really one of in- difference. It may surprise us that he devotes so much attention to such subjects as astrology, dreams, divination, etc., but these things were widely believed in his day, and a scientific treatment of them was not out of place at that time.
Although Bacon’s empiricism is not thoroughly and consistently worked out, we may class him among the members of that school. All our knowledge, except revelation, is derived by him from sensation; and only particulars should exist. Mind or reason acts on the materials furnished by the senses; knowledge is rational and experimental, but reason has no truths of its own. At the same
time, mental faculties are spoken of as though they were a priori endowments. The soul is material, and yet there is a rational soul, about which, however, we know nothing, and which belongs to religion. Teleology is banished from physics and becomes a part of a barren part of metaphysics.
Bacon and Astrology
Bacon felt that astrology was very full of superstition, and argued that there was very little sound evidence to be discovered in it. However, he wanted to see astrology ‘purified’ rather than rejected altogether . He believed that astrology needed to be based on reason and physical speculation, and rejected the use of horoscopes, nativities, elections, and query. Bacon insisted that the heavenly bodies affected the more sensitive bodies, such as humours, air, spirits, an actually affected solid bodies and large numbers of people. However, he also felt that the influence on an “individual” was so small that it would be insignificant [. He held that astrological predictions of the climate and what each season would bring forth, could be accurate and have some value. In contrast, forecasts for particular days held no value.
Bacon’s view was that if astrology was purified, then it would be accepted as a "Sane Astrology." Thus the very nature of the stars and planets and hence their differences, needed to be updated in accord with logical sense, and not be contradicted or be inconsistent with what was scientifically proven. Such a "Sane Astrology" would be used for the prediction of comets, meteors, coming droughts, heats, frosts, earthquakes, fiery eruptions, winds, great rains, the seasons of the year, plagues, epidemic diseases, plenty, famine, wars, transmigration of people, or great innovations of things both natural and civil [Tester, 222]. Astrology could be used for agricultural or horticultural actions, factors including planting according to the phase of the Moon would be particularly important. He rejected the use of all semi-magical uses of astrology connected with seals, talismans, amulets, etc. In Novum Organum, Bacon was very dismissive and said that all superstition is much the same whether it was in regards to astrology, dreams, omens, or any of the like.
Bacon’s reputation and legacy remain controversial even today. While no historian of science or philosophy doubts his immense importance both as a proselytizer on behalf of the empirical method and as an advocate of sweeping intellectual reform, opinion varies widely as to the actual social value and moral significance of the ideas that he represented and effectively bequeathed to us. On the other hand, those who view nature as an entity in its own right, a higher-order estate of which the human community is only a part, tend to perceive him as a kind of arch-villain – the evil originator of the idea of science as the instrument of global imperialism and technological conquest.