Introduction to Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Historical Context

  • Latter part of the great age of exploration (The Americas)
  • A period of transition: From an age of deference to authority to one of exploration, invention, methodically-based science, and the erosion of religious authority (Protestant Revolution—early 1500’s)
  • Queen Mary’s (Catholic) execution of Protestants (around 300 burned at the stake) during her short five-year reign.
  • Active during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth (d. 1603) and King James I (became Lord Chancellor)
  • Roughly acontemporary of Galileo (1564-1642, Descartes (1596-1650), and Hobbes (1588-1679)

Bacon’s Main Accomplishments and Influence:

  • Refinement of scientific method (InstauratioMagna (The Great Renewal), containing The Novum Organum (The New Instrument)
  • His work lead to the establishment of research institutions, e.g., the Royal Society (described in his New Atlantis), essential for the advancement of the sciences.
  • Opposed dependence on tradition, authority, mystery, and superstition (but remained religious)
  • Studied Law

Bacon died in 1626 of pneumonia after conducting experiments with ice and chicken meat.

Overview of main points of this presentation

The Idols (illusions) of the mind:

“For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence, nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.” (The Advancement of Learning)

Bacon’s Scientific Method

  • *Bacon’s critique of Aristotelian science (Organum, Nova Organum), applies as well to Renaissance alchemy, magic, and astrology:The ‘methods’ of these ‘disciplines’ utilize occasional insights, but under investigation fail to reproduce results.
  • *Does not favor empiricism over rationalism, but rather believes that bothcan fall short and must be improved.
  • Individual erudition must be abandoned in favor of collective research.
  • *Bacon came to the fundamental insight that facts cannot be collected from nature, but must be constituted by methodical procedures, which have to be put into practice by scientists in order to determinetheir validity.
  • *A new inductive method: Natural science should proceed, not from universal axioms, but from particular observations, arriving at axioms (not beginning with them); not simply by confirmation of hypotheses, but by negation and exclusion. See the example of the tides, in the “Appendix” on “crucial instances,” which has been attached to our reading selection (Book I of Nova Organum), but is actually from Book II. Also see the “tables on heat,” available on the CS lecture website, not assigned, but discussed, below).
  • Religion and science should be kept separate but are nevertheless complementary to each other.

Main Points of the assigned texts:

Preface to InstauratioMagna (The Great Renewal) 1620

  • Similar to Descartes, we need to “begin from correct foundations.” (How is he different from Descartes? The starting point is not “clear and distinct ideas,” but rather rigorous attention to experience.)
  • We are ignorant mostly because we depend on a “very deceptive and feeble method” (3). “for the logic now in use [Aristotle’s] . . . still falls a long way short of the subtlety of nature” (5).
  • Part of this is due to our own weaknesses (“The Idols,” see below)
  • We draw conclusions much too fast.
  • Note that The Great Renewal is supposed to contain six parts, just as God created the world is six days and then rested on the seventh.
  • Wants to provide a “thread through the labyrinth” of nature, “from the first perceptions of sense, [which have] to be made with a sure method,” right on through to the axioms (or general truths and laws) (5).
  • “A true and lawful marriage between the empirical and rational faculties (whose sad and unhappy divorce and separation have caused all the trouble in the human family” (7).
  • Adam was forbidden to inquire into God’s will, but not into God’s intellect (created nature).
  • Knowledge in the natural sciences is to be sought “for the uses and benefits of life, and to improve and conduct it in charity (love).

“The Plan of the Work”

First part was not written.

Second is the New Organon (Books I and II)

Only some of the Third part was written.

Some of the Fifth.

The Sixth did not appear.

Bacon’s method outlined here will be explained in my section on the New Organon, below.

But the basic idea is:

  • “And so the order of demonstration also is completely reversed. For the way the thing has normally been done until now is to leap immediately from sense and particulars to the most general propositions…”
  • Whereas, induction should arrive at axioms gradually.
  • Our method provides transparency.
  • Experiments are aids to the senses, making the latter more reliable.
  • Note,against Descartes: the intellect is more error prone than the senses. This will be shown in the Idols.
  • “Nature is conquered by obedience [to it]”
  • The two goals of man, knowledge and power, a pair of twins, are really come to the same thing…”

The New Organon (Book I)

Organon = ‘instrument’ and reflects Aristotle’s Organon, which contained his Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, On Interpretation, Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and Categories. These are also generally referred to by Bacon as “Aristotle’s Logic,” and are the targets of much of his criticism.

*Why is the work written in aphorisms? They are attention grabbing. Succinct. Allowing examination of the whole, part by part.

IX

“The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this—that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.”

Criticism of Aristotelian logic (briefly)

XIV

The syllogism consists of propositions, propositions consist of words, words are symbols of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (which is the root of the matter) are confused and over hastily abstracted from the facts, there can be no firmness in the superstructure. Our only hope therefore lies in a true induction. (3)

XXVI

The conclusions of human reason as ordinarily applied in matters of nature, I call for the sake of distinction Anticipations[or preconceptions] of Nature (as a thing rash or premature). That reason which is elicited from facts by a just and methodical process, I call Interpretation of Nature. (5)

To do this rightly, we need to dispel illusions.

THE IDOLS (p. 6)

XXXVIII

The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein, not only so beset men's minds that truth can hardly find entrance, but even after entrance is obtained, they will again in the very instauration of the sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being forewarned of the danger fortify themselves as far as may be against their assaults.

[Note that ‘human understanding’ refers to what we would now call our “cognitive ability,” our ability to think. ‘The understanding’ is the name for that “faculty” or ability.]

XXXIX

There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names, calling the first class Idols of the Tribe, the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.

Idols of the Tribe (of the human race)

Unlike other “empiricists” Bacon did not believe that the mind was a “blank slate” (tabla rasa) at birth, such that knowledge of things consisted of what the mind merely received what it was given.Rather:

“The understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

How so?

Also: “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).

Bacon’s own examples, Aphorism XLV (45)

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds…. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals … being utterly rejected.

[Can you think of any other examples? Maybe this example is not so good, given that Bacon maintained geocentrisim]

XLVI

[The mind tends to agree with what it already knows, and reject what it doesn’t]

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows ashaving escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods — "Aye," asked he again, "but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?" And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like;

it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed toward both alike. Indeed, in the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.

Deceptions of the affections

XLIX

Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.

Deceptions of the senses:

L

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases;

XLVII

The human understanding being unable to rest still seeks something prior in the order of nature. And then it is that in struggling toward that which is further off it falls back upon that which is nearer at hand, namely, on final causes, which have relation clearly to the nature of man rather than to the nature of the universe; and from this source have strangely defiled philosophy.

[What are “final causes,” by the way?]

LI

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to abstractions and gives a substance and reality to things which are fleeting. But to resolve nature into abstractions is less to our purpose than to dissect her into parts; as did the school of Democritus [atomism], which went further into nature than the rest. Matter rather than forms should be the object of our attention, its configurations and changes of configuration, and simple action, and law of action or motion; for forms are figments of the human mind, unless you will call those laws of action forms.

[Aristotelian forms are figments; but Bacon’s forms are true natures and laws. See more about formsin the section of the “Tables of Discovery,” below.]

The idols of the tribe, in sum:

The mind is prone to learn in twisted ways, because it is full of tendencies:

To seek regularity, though it is not.

To agree with what it already knows.

To reject the new and different, the threatening, the unpleasant.

To accept magical explanations.

To be moved by affirmatives.

To be moved by what strikes the emotions and senses sharply.

To seek purpose, where there is none.

Idols of the Cave (of the individual person)

XLII

For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; (7)

Also habit, and accident.

[Any examples you can think of?]

There is one principal and as it were radical distinction between different minds, in respect of philosophy and the sciences, which is this: that some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things, others to mark their resemblances. The steady and acute mind can fix its contemplations and dwell and fasten on the subtlest distinctions; the lofty and discursive mind recognizes and puts together the finest and most general resemblances. Both kinds, however, easily err in excess, by catching the one at gradations, the other at shadows.

Idols of the Marketplace(of our association with others)

lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.

LIX

But the Idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all — idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding; and this it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Now words, being commonly framed and applied according to the capacity of the vulgar, follow those lines of division which are most obvious to the vulgar understanding. And whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or a more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true divisions of nature, words stand in the way and resist the change. . . . Yet even definitions cannot cure this evil in dealing with natural and material things, since the definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget others. So that it is necessary to recur to individual instances, and those in due series and order, as I shall say presently when I come to the method and scheme for the formation of notions and axioms.

[Examples?]

LX

The idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds. They are either names of things which do not exist (for as there are things left unnamed through lack of observation, so likewise are there names which result from fantastic suppositions and to which nothing in reality corresponds), or they are names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined, and hastily and irregularly derived from realities.

Idols of the Theater (the theater of received science)

…all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. …Neither again do I mean this only of entire systems, but also of many principles and axioms in science, which by tradition, credulity, and negligence have come to be received.

Three kinds of false philosophy: The Sophistical, the Empirical, and the Superstitious.

The Sophistical: Depends too much on Aristotelian science and fails to attend to experience.

What was wrong with Aristotelian science, anyway?

Aristotle held that certain “forms” could explain certain phenomena (not to be confused with Bacon’s use of “form” as a law of nature (e.g., the form of heat, whose nature we will learn, below).

Example 1: Why do things fall?

Because they have the form of gravitas.

What is gravitas?

That quality which makes things endeavor to reach their natural resting place (the center of the Earth).

But there is no explanation here of what gravitas consists of, how to measure it, or how to make predictions.

Example 2: Why does alcohol make you sleepy?

Because it hassoporific in it.

What is “soporific”?

That quality in a thing that makes you sleepy.

But this is no explanation. It says only that alcohol makes you sleepy because it has a sleepy quality.

Example 3: What is heat?

Heat is caloric, the quality or form that makes things hot.

But of course, this is no explanation. For Bacon’s analysis of heat, see the Tables of Discovery on heat.

Aristotelian syllogism (“Logic”), understood as a deductive argument.

  1. All things in nature have a purpose. (universal premise, presupposed)
  2. Humans have teeth by nature. (observation premise)

Therefore, teeth have a purpose. (deductive conclusion)

The Aristotelian presupposition notion that everything has a purpose (telos) is at work here.

How might Bacon question this argument?

Induction, on the other hand, begins with particular observations and then draws a general conclusion.

  1. This barrel appears to be full of apples. I am told there are 100. (observation premise)
  2. I have picked out five apples, each of which is rotten. (observation premise)
  3. Hypothesis: the next apple I pull out will be rotten (hypothesis)
  4. The next apple is rotten. (observation)
  5. Therefore, every apple in this barrel is rotten. (general conclusion)

This is a weak inductive argument. We can make it stronger by increasing our sample size.