I. 2:30-2:40 General
A.
The problem of knowledge
B.
reforming and promoting learning through experiment and
induction
C.
Separation of science and theology
D.
Novum Organum—reply to Aristotles emphasis on
deduction
E.
Scientific utopia—New atlantis
1.
Bacon
envisioned history as progress
F.
Advancement of Learning: whatÕs in the way: rhetoric,
scholasticism, pseudo science
G.
Ignored actual discoveries of Galileo and Harvey
H.
Induction
1.
The
emphasis on beginning with observation pervades the entire work. In fact, it is
in the idea that natural philosophy must begin with the senses that we find the
revolutionary part of Bacon's philosophy, and its consequent philosophical
method, eliminative induction, is one of Bacon's most lasting contributions to
science and philosophy.
2.
Induction,
methodologically opposed to deduction, entails beginning with particular cases
observed by the senses and then attempting to discover the general axioms from
those observations. In other words, induction presupposes nothing. Deduction,
on the other hand, begins with general axioms, or first principles, by which
the truth of particular cases is extrapolated. Bacon emphasizes the strength of
the gradual process that is inherent in induction:
3.
ÒThere
are and can only be two ways of investigating and discovering truth. The one
rushes up from the sense and particulars to axioms of the highest generality
and, from these principles and their indubitable truth, goes on to infer and
discover middle axioms; and this is the way in current use. The other way draws
axioms from the sense and particulars by climbing steadily and by degrees so
that it reaches the ones of highest generality last of all; and this is the
true but still untrodden way.Ó (aph. 19) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Organum
I.
Forerunner of Royal Society
1.
Bacon
was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the Royal Society founded
under Charles II in 1660.[
J.
He has been reputed as the "Father of Experimental
Science".[39]Bacon
is also considered to be the philosophical influence behind the dawning of the
Industrial age. In his works, Bacon called for a "spring of a progeny of
inventions, which shall overcome, to some extent, and subdue our needs and
miseries",[40]
always proposing that all scientific work should be done for charitable
purposes, as matter of alleviating mankind's misery, and that therefore science
should be practical and has as purpose the inventing of useful things for the
improvement of mankind's estate. This changed the course of science in history,
from a merely contemplative state, as it was found in ancient and medieval
ages, to a practical, inventive state - that would have eventually led to the
inventions that made possible the Industrial Revolutions of
the following centuries.[41]
K. Title page
2.
Bacon's Instauratio Magna
which contains his Novum Organum
which is a new method to replace that of Aristotle. The image is of a ship
passing through the pillars of Hercules, which symbolized for the ancients the
limits of man's possible explorations. The image represents the analogy between
the great voyages of discovery and the explorations leading to the advancement
of learning.
a)
DanteÕs
Ulysses condemned to Hell for taking his crew through these
II. 2:40-2:55
Aphorisms
A.
I-III
1.
density
and confidence: humans are subject to nature alone and can understand
it—Òcf. Of TruthÓ
2.
instruments—for
the body and the mind
3.
knowledge
and power—knowing causes allows us to produce effects
4.
knowledge
and action; theory and practice
5.
there
is no heaven or hell or supernatural entity that can be known by science
6.
Nature
in Bacon and King Lear—
B.
38-62 Idols—false notions
1.
smash
the idols; iconoclasm;
a)
biblical
precedent: —false gods; superstitions; refutation of errors
(1) So much concerning the several
classes of Idols, and their equipage: all of which must be renounced and put
away with a fixed and solemn determination, and the understanding thoroughly
freed and cleansed; the entrance into the kingdom of man, founded on the
sciences, being not much other than the entrance into the kingdom of heaven,
whereinto none may enter except as a little child.
b)
Hobbes,
Locke, Hume
c)
modern
skeptics—Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Pierce
d)
hermeneutics
of suspicion--deconstruction
2.
metaphors:
tribe, cave, market-place, theatre
3.
Tribe
a)
Objectivism;
Nature and the mind
b)
On
the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according
to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the
universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving
rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its
own nature with it.
(1)
XLV. The human understanding is of its own nature prone to
suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet
it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist.
(2) 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.
(3) Indeed in the establishment of any
true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.
(4) XLVIII The human understanding is
unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain.
Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world; but
always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyondÉ for
although the most general principles in nature ought to be held merely positive,
as they are discovered, and cannot with truth be referred to a cause;
nevertheless the human understanding being unable to rest still seeks something
prior in the order of nature. And then it is that in struggling towards that
which is further off it falls back upon that which is more nigh at hand;
namely, on final causes:
(5) For the sense by itself is a thing
infirm and erring; neither can instruments for enlarging or sharpening the
senses do much; but all the truer kind of interpretation of nature is effected
by instances and experiments fit and apposite;
(6) 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,
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;
4.
Cave
a)
For
every one (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or
den of his own, which refracts and discolours 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; or the like.
(1) Men become attached to certain
particular sciences and speculations, either because they fancy themselves the
authors and inventors thereof, or because they have bestowed the greatest pains
upon them and become most habituated to them
(2) 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
(3) Men become attached to certain
particular sciences and speculations, either because they fancy themselves the
authors and inventors thereof, or because they have bestowed the greatest pains
upon them and become most habituated to them
(4) And generally let every student of
nature take this as a rule, -- that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon
with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion
(a)
Hermeneutics of suspicion
5.
Marketplace
a)
Idols
formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call
Idols of the Market-place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there.
For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to
the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words
wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
(1) 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.
(2) 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,
(3) 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.
6.
Theatre
a)
Idols
of the Theatre; because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many
stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and
scenic fashion.
(1)
Theatre metaphor—all the worldÕs a stage—Ralegh
Bacon's Instauratio Magna
which contains his Novum Organum
which is a new method to replace that of Aristotle. The image is of a ship
passing through the pillars of Hercules, which symbolized for the ancients the
limits of man's possible explorations. The image represents the analogy between
the great voyages of discovery and the explorations leading to the advancement
of learning.