Wednesday 3 November 2021

Francis Bacon

                                                   Behold the Baconater

I'm back after a hiatus. Who was it who said old age is a ship wreck? Anyway, my health has not been of the best lately and I've been prone to melancholy. My 'Black Dog' is always lurking in the depths of my psyche and sometimes comes forth to bite. It robs me of my muse and I find it difficult to put pen to paper. The dog on my shoulder has decided to tarry no more and has retreated to his den deep within my soul. But he will be back baying, howling and slavering upon my very core.  

Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650), is considered the founder of 'Modern Philosophy', and in my opinion, quite rightly. He was one of the first great scholars to relinquish the hitherto reliance on 'Scholastic Philosophy' which had dominated and stifled the advancement of knowledge for over a 1,000 years. A system heavily reliant upon the philosophy of Aristotle that had become the stale mainstay of philosophic thought. It took a bold mind indeed to break with this tradition, such was the reputation of the Stagirite.

Descartes  great contribution to thought progression was to strip the subject of philosophy to its fundamental base and then proceed to build upon this solid intellectual bed rock, layer by layer, to complete a novel philosophical edifice. However, this post is not about Descartes, (I've covered Descartes previously; check the post here) but concerns a contemporary, Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626). Sadly, most folk know little about this Great Man even though, in terms of original thought and ultimate influence, he has had a more far reaching and lasting impact than Descartes. Bacon was perhaps the first great thinker to emphasise the importance of the scientific inductive method and to formally put forth in writing, its underlying principles. Again, like Descartes, he departed from the Scholasticism to break new ground in the acquisition of knowledge, however, they differed upon ultimate methodology and philosophical emphasis.

Unlike Descartes, who managed to embed the Christian deity firmly into his philosophical model, Bacon insisted that science (it is to be remembered that the concepts of science and philosophy were interchangeable at this time) and religion should occupy separate knowledge domains, without overlap. This innovative idea was enough for Bacon to be labelled as an atheist, during his time. But a close reading of his work reveals Bacon as a genuine and devout believer, although his views were certainly unorthodox. If born a generation earlier he would undoubtedly have suffered the indignity of his corporeal quintessence being placed upon a stake and subjected to a profound and terminal thermal insult; crispy Bacon.

Bacon did not take the bible literally, but appreciated the bible's use of metaphor and literary devices, sundry. He considered biblical miracles and 'wonders' as lying outside natural law and consequently discounted their historical occurrence. The mysteries, of revelation, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, were not subject to scientific scrutiny and therefore belonged to the province of 'faith', not science. This was quite revolutionary for its time but this timbre of thought, much to the disquiet of the church, would become more prevalent amongst thoughtful men as the 'secular revolution' developed. Bacon's thoroughly secular thinking, although not in itself opposed to theological dogma and tenets, opened novel avenues of thought, which over time, would prove perniciously corrosive to religious thought. Wise heads soon came to realise that Christian theology, if carefully scrutinised, had no role to play except in the realm of 'faith'. However, even this limited domain would come under attack from thorough going rationalists. It is as if a slight crack in the dam of theology had produced a breach that no religious finger could stem.

Bacon and Descartes differed not only in their notions of theology, but in their interpretation of knowledge acquisition. Descartes, in tune with the philosophy of the ancients, considered that the application of pure thought, if rendered by the 'wise', and if undertaken correctly, would result in the discovery of infallible knowledge. In contrast, Bacon considered 'natural thought processes' prone to numerous errors. However, Bacon was a severe critic of extreme skepticism; the idea that certainty can never be achieved. An idea that Bacon considered self defeating. While acknowledging that certainty is illusive and difficult to achieve, nevertheless a methodology employing sound principles, strictly adhered to can overcome these difficulties. Truly it was a philosophy of intellectual honesty and optimism. While recognising and accepting that the human intellect was inherently fallible, Bacon stressed that the development of 'cognitive instruments', judicially applied, would enable the acquisition of scientific knowledge, albeit that acquisition would be cumulative and open ended. Progress is a surety as scientists build upon the past achievements of their scientific predecessors. Certainty is achieved, not by the wholesale acquisition of knowledge, but piece by piece by sound inductive processes.

Bacon clearly enumerated the obstacles that stand in the way of the cognitive process, which he termed, 'fallacies in the minds of man', or 'idols'. These 'idols' are clearly defined and classified. They can be summarised as follows: 'Idols of the Tribe'. In this regard he includes distortions naturally inherent within human nature; 'Idols of the Cave'. This includes individual bias and distortions; 'Idols' of the Market'. Concerns the 'idol' formed from associations between men; and finally, 'Idols of the Theatre'. This 'idol' relates to the torpor of the intellect when it comes to formulating and accepting new principles. We are apt to rely on previous dogmas and perhaps accept established philosophies without engaging our critical faculties.

Bacon emphasised the quirks of the human mind which interferes with our judgment. For instance we are prone to accept data which fits our preconceived notion of order, while ignoring counter data that might conflict with our pet theory. We are perhaps happy to accrue affirmative data when in fact we should be looking for data that negates our theory. A single negation, as far as a theory is concerned, is vastly more informative than a 1,000,000 confirmatory data points.

Perhaps Bacon's greatest contribution was the removal of all references of 'divine purpose' or the 'first cause' from science. God was not required and this was a distinct break from the dominant philosophy of the Aristotelian schoolmen of his day. What I admire about Bacon, is his undaunted, sure footed innovative nature. He was breaking new ground and, unlike most scientists, of any era, he had no one to refer back to. In this regard, he was truly alone. It must have taken great courage to 'go it alone' against the entrenched orthodoxy, which had ruled acadaemia for over a 1,000 years.

And, Francis Bacon, of course set the scene for the next great English philosopher of the empiric mold, John Locke.

14 comments:

  1. Surely his greatest contribution was the invention of pork scratchings.

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    1. Yum pork scratchings. A treat from my past. These days I'm expected to watch my cholesterol. The docs want to put me back on statins, but the last time I took them I had horrendous side effects.

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    2. Read (again?) A Dissertation On Toast Pork by Charles Lamb.
      Easily got on line - long out of copyright.
      That will cheer you up nearly as much as a strip of fresh baked pork belly pork.

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  2. A the results a recent survey of (mostly Western academic) philosophers can be found here: https://dailynous.com/2021/11/01/what-philosophers-believe-results-from-the-2020-philpapers-survey/

    One of the other questions shown in the write-up was which dead philosopher the respondents identified with:-

    Table 7: Philosophers most identified with
    Aristotle (238)
    Hume (221)
    Kant (188)
    Wittgenstein (117)
    Lewis (117)
    Quine (107)
    Frege (95)
    Carnap (80)
    Russell (80)
    Plato (74)
    Rawls (71)
    Mill (67)
    Aquinas (56)
    Marx (52)
    Socrates (49)
    Descartes (48)
    James (47)
    Parfit (46)
    Dewey (45)
    Putnam (44)
    Davidson (44)
    Leibniz (41)
    Anscombe (39)
    Nietzsche (39)
    Moore (39)
    Hegel (38)
    Heidegger (34)
    Locke (33)
    Husserl (33)
    Spinoza (32)
    Reid (32)
    Merleau-Ponty (28)
    Foucault (27)
    Beauvoir (26)
    Peirce (26)
    Augustine (23)
    Kierkegaard (22)
    Arendt (18)
    Popper (18)
    Hobbes (16)
    Sellars (16)
    Nagarjuna (15)
    Du Bois (13)
    Rorty (13)
    Sartre (13)
    Berkeley (12)
    Austin (9)
    Wollstonecraft (9)
    Grice (8)
    Derrida (8)
    Whitehead (7)
    Rousseau (7)
    Sidgwick (7)
    Confucius (7)
    Ramsey (6)
    Buddha (6)
    Zhuangzi (6)
    Schopenhauer (6)
    Deleuze (5)
    Dummett (5)

    The most popular reply is still Aristotle, and no mention of bacon. It's possible that a proportion of the survey respondents include affiliations with Theology.

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    1. saw and startet to follow the blog in early 2022, too late to join this superb discurse. Yeah, its a shame to forget huge Bacon (who came away in difference to René, who was blamed by inquisition as the most dangerous heretic ever and therefore ended up á la Carte). Spontaneously I miss on that list Thales of Miletos, Parmenide of Elea, Seneca, Plutarch of Athens, Will of Ockham, Master Eckhard, Pascale, Voltaire, Diderot, Camus and would like to suggest Ernst von Glasersfeld plus last not not least Charles Sanders Peirce and Christine Ladd Franklin. Last visionarily ingenious couple (lovers in true life too) are the protagonists in the 5th stageplay of my epistemological Theater-Pentalogy and (not only because of that) more than worth to deal with. They show to know, where no one else could go. Bon Voyage...
      (and yeah - university means nothing but waste of your intelligence)

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  3. Now that is fascinating. Aristotle being 'top dog' is intriguing and telling. Everything Aristotle wrote has been found to be incorrect except his work on logic ie the syllogism. It goes to show how stale and 'head in the clouds' acaedemic philosophy has become. It is no longer an exercise in philosophy, but a historic survey. I'm writing a post on whether 'philosophy is dead'. Essentially whether university teaching has become redundant and irrelevant. As for Bacon he was mainly classified as a scientist. As said in the post, in this period the term philosopher and scientist were fluid. In my opinion, even though he was a scientist he did make philosophic statements that were extremely influential. He certainly influenced John Locke, arguably the first of the great British empiricists empiricists. I was thinking of writing a post on Locke. I've already written about Hume and Berkeley. You can find these on search. Thanks.

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    1. A visulazation of the links berween philosopher I cam across today https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/

      Philosophy may or may not be dead... but modern philosophers seem to worry a lot about zombies. Just sayin'

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    2. PS. Another visualization...
      https://www.visualizingsep.com/#/entries/aristotle/

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  4. Your body may be a wreck but your mind is in good nick.
    Just think, there is a Scotchman nearly 8000 miles under your shoe soles who appreciates your essays.
    So keep on keeping on.

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  5. Thanks for the encouragement. To be honest I write on this blog, mainly to keep my mind active and not to slip into intellectual atrophy. I've read that retirement can have negative affects on both mind and body. I can no longer run for exercise these days however, I have my archery which is good for upper body strength. My writing certainly keeps my mind limber and I'm gaining valuable knowledge along the way. You are never too old.....

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  6. Descartes - drunken fart was he not?

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    1. "Descartes,Descartes, was a drunken fart, I drink therefore, I am"......

      He certainly liked the high life. He was also a delicate little flower and didn't rise from his bed before noon. Which is hardly credible considering the amount of work he achieved.

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    2. Descartes was a musketeer in the 30 years war from the beginning, well known for his superb performance on the rapier, doing combat in havy battles...that delicate little flower...

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