BACON, FRANCIS

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was born in London, England on January 22. His life combined politics and philosophy. As a politician, Bacon became a prominent lawyer, judge, member of Parliament, and adviser to the British monarch during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and King James I (1566–1625). He reached the peak of his political power in 1618, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor, the highest judge in England. He fell from power in 1621 when he was impeached by Parliament for accepting bribes in his judicial cases, although he insisted there was no evidence that his judgments had been unfairly biased by the gifts he received. He died in London on April 9.

The idea that human beings should use science and technology to conquer nature for human benefit was first elaborated in the seventeenth century by Bacon. He supported that idea with five kinds of arguments—philosophical, theological, ethical, methodological, and political. Although the scientific and technological mastery of nature has become a fundamental idea in modern life, some people have challenged the wisdom of that idea by questioning Bacon's arguments.

Philosophy of Technological Science

As a philosopher, Bacon sought to move beyond traditional learning and establish a new intellectual world based on an observational and experimental science of nature that would give human beings power over nature for human benefit. In The Advancement of Learning (1605), he defended the pursuit of knowledge and surveyed the whole world of knowledge as it existed in his time. In The Great Instauration (1620), Bacon sketched a vast plan for his new scientific philosophy with technological powers, including the The New Organon, which proposed a new logic of inductive reasoning. Although he never completed this plan, he published many writings that worked out parts of it. In his Essays (1625), his most popular work, he offered scattered but penetrating observations on human life. In New Atlantis (published posthumously in 1627), he wrote a utopian fable about a society ruled by what would today be called a technoscientific research institute.

Bacon's philosophical argument was that human beings needed to reconstruct all knowledge based on natural philosophy or physics, which required studying the laws of nature as physical regularities that can be established by observation and experimentation. Beginning with Socrates (470–399 b.c.e.), many philosophers have regarded natural philosophy as less important for understanding human life than moral philosophy and theology. But Bacon thought that natural philosophy should be regarded as "the great mother of the sciences" (Bacon 2000, pp. 64–65). In particular he praised the natural philosophy of Democritus (460–370 b.c.e.), who thought that everything in nature could be explained ultimately as caused by the physical motion of atoms (Bacon 2000, 2002). Such knowledge will give people both a theoretical understanding of nature and a practical or technological power over it, because understanding the causes will give them the power to produce effects. Human knowledge and human power will be combined. This power will be limited, however, by nature itself. "Nature is conquered only by obedience," Bacon declared. And "all that man can do to achieve results is to bring natural bodies together and take them apart; Nature does the rest internally" (Bacon 2000, p. 33).

Bacon's theological argument was that this new natural philosophy would be compatible with biblical theology, although the two needed to be separated. True science is the study of God's works as revealed in nature. True religion is the study of God's words as revealed in the Bible. The book of nature and the book of scripture are separated yet compatible. Through reason, people can discover the causal laws of nature. Through faith, they can ascend to God as the miraculous First Cause of nature's laws (Bacon 2002). Humans believe in miracles as a matter of faith. But this goes beyond natural science, because "miracles are either not true or not natural; and therefore impertinent for the story of nature" (Bacon 2002, p. 177). In using scientific knowledge of nature to exercise technological mastery over nature, people show a dominion over nature that manifests their dignity as the only creatures created in God's image (Bacon 2000, 2002).

Bacon's ethical argument was that this new science would be good both as an end in itself for the pleasure of understanding and as a means for its practical benefits. To know the truth about nature is satisfying in itself for those who choose a contemplative life, because such knowledge is "the sovereign good of human nature" (Bacon 2002, p. 342). Scientific knowledge also gives the power to control nature for human benefit through discoveries and inventions that make human life more secure. By thus securing "the empire of man over things," the new science will show a love for the good of humanity that expresses the Christian virtue of charity (Bacon 2000, p. 100).

Bacon's methodological argument was that the success of this new knowledge would depend on a rigorously inductive method of reasoning from observations and experiments. Humans will need a universal natural history that allows them to move from particular facts to general ideas that suggest experiments; and from these experiments they can move gradually to ever more general ideas, until they finally grasp the fundamental laws of nature (Bacon 2000). The theoretical understanding of these laws of nature as rooted in experimental science will then yield a practical mastery of nature through mechanical inventions and discoveries. Bacon pointed to printing, gunpowder, the compass, microscopes, telescopes, and other examples of technological discoveries of his time as illustrating the practical power of natural science (Bacon 2000).

Bacon's political argument was that the observational and experimental work required for the new science would necessitate the cooperative activity of many people over many years, which could be sustained only through public institutions devoted to scientific education and research. Bacon attempted to persuade Queen Elizabeth and King James to support his intellectual project (Bacon 2000, 2002). He suggested that political rulers should be guided by natural philosophers. For example, he thought that Aristotle's influence with Alexander the Great illustrated the glory of learning in sovereignty. In New Atlantis, he described an imaginary society organized to support a scientific research institute, which would produce discoveries and inventions that would benefit the whole society.

Influence and Critics

Bacon's proponents have included many of the leaders of modern science. In seventeenth-century England, scientists such as Robert Hooke (1635–1703) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691) undertook the cooperative experimental research advocated by Bacon. They set up the Royal Society of London in 1662 with a charter from King Charles II (1630–1685) to carry out Bacon's project. In the eighteenth century, Denis Diderot (1713–1784), Jean d'Alembert (1717–1783), and others in the French Enlightenment acknowledged the influence of Bacon in pointing them toward the promotion of the arts and sciences for human benefit. In America, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) praised Bacon as one of the three greatest human beings who ever lived (along with Isaac Newton and John Locke). In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin (1809–1882) adopted Bacon's view of inductive science and his metaphor of the two books of God as showing how religion and science can be compatible. In the twentieth century, the increase in scientific discoveries and inventions from publicly supported research institutes seemed to vindicate Bacon's optimism. In Consilience (1998), Edward O. Wilson (b. 1929) sketched a program for the unification of all knowledge based on the physical laws of nature that would complete Bacon's project.

At the same time, since Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) attacked him early in the nineteenth century, the number of Bacon's opponents has also grown. De Maistre was a French conservative who saw Bacon as a source for the morally corrupting atheistic materialism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. De Maistre argued that in basing all knowledge on physical causes, Bacon was denying the importance of moral and religious knowledge and undermining the dignity of the human soul as a spiritual power beyond the material world. Devout Christians such as Boyle had defended Bacon's science against the charge of atheistic materialism, and Bacon had written a "Confession of Faith" that conformed to the Protestant theology of John Calvin (1509–1564) (Bacon 2002). Yet de Maistre insisted that Bacon had hidden the atheistic implications of his scientific materialism through false professions of faith.

Since the twentieth century, Bacon's opponents have warned that his project for exploiting nature shows a disrespect for nature and nature's God, and a willful determination to replace the naturally given and divinely ordained with the artificially constructed and humanly manipulated. From C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) to Leon Kass, these critics worry that the abolition of nature through technology will remove the ethical limits on human will that come from nature or God. As biotechnology gives people the power to create new life forms and even redesign human nature, they might eventually find themselves in a totally artificial world empty of natural value.

Bacon's critics warn that to speak of humanity using science and technology to master nature for human benefit is vague in ways that hide inherent problems. To speak of humanity gaining such mastery suggests that all human beings will have equal power. But is it not inevitable that some human beings will have more of this power than others, and that they will use it to advance their selfish interests? Will the nations with the greatest access to scientific and technological power not use it to exploit those nations with less power? Can scientists and engineers be trusted to use their power for the good of all? If this power is publicly regulated, can the regulators be trusted to act for the common good?

To speak of the human mastery of nature suggests that human beings will have an unconstrained power that will set them apart from and above nature. But will that power not always be constrained by the potentialities of nature and by the limits of human knowledge? Will human beings not often change nature in ways that produce unanticipated consequences that are undesirable? And in changing nature, will human beings not change themselves as well? Does mastery of nature include mastery of human nature—meaning that some human beings will have mastery over the nature of other human beings, perhaps by genetically engineering the future generation of human beings? But would this not be the ultimate tyranny of some human beings over others? Even if individual human beings are free to use this power for changing their nature in whatever ways they desire, will this not create possibilities for foolishly choosing to use such power in dehumanizing ways? Might not the power of parents to manipulate the biological nature of their children deprive children of their dignity and freedom?

To speak of the mastery of nature for human benefit suggests that people have a clear grasp of the human goods about which they can all agree. But will people not often disagree about these human goods? And will these goods not often conflict with one another? Can one assume, as Bacon did, that biblical religion will guide understanding of the human goods to which human mastery of nature will be directed? Or do modern science and technology promote a materialistic and utilitarian view of the world that subverts religious belief while encouraging a hedonistic egoism? Can one still believe in the moral worth of human beings as spiritual creatures created in God's image? Or must science teach that human beings are only highly evolved animals? Even if Baconian science secures the technical means to master nature, can one trust that science to secure the moral ends of that mastery? Will human mastery of nature promote human nobility? Or will it produce a world of paltry pleasures and shallow souls? The future of science and technology as directed to the conquest of nature turns on how successful people are in thinking through such questions.

LARRY ARNHART

SEE ALSO Atlantis, Old and New;Experimentation;Progress;Scientific Revolution;Utopia and Dystopia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bacon, Francis. (2000). The New Organon, trans. Lisa Jardine, and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Bacon, Francis. (2002). The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jones, Richard Foster. (1982). Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Dover Publications. History of Bacon's influence on English science.

Kass, Leon. (1985). Towards a More Natural Science. New York: Free Press. Neoconservative attack on Baconian mastery of nature.

Leiss, William. (1994). The Domination of Nature. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Critical history of the idea of mastery of nature.

Lewis, C. S. (1947). The Abolition of Man. New York: Macmillan Publishing. Criticism of Baconian mastery by a Christian apologist.

Maistre, Joseph de. (1998). An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon, trans. Richard A. Lebrun. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Merchant, Carolyn. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Feminist history and criticism of the idea of mastery over nature.

Peltonen, Markku, ed. (1996). The Cambridge Companion to Bacon. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Surveys scholarly studies of Bacon.

Urbach, Peter. (1987). Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing. Best study of Bacon's scientific method.

Wilson, Edward O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf.

Zagorin, Perez. (1998). Francis Bacon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. General survey of Bacon's thought.