Knowledge is instrumentally valuable – Bacon

Bacon is now known primarily as a philosopher and essayist but was also a courtier, diplomat and lawyer. He left Cambridge at fifteen, to pursue a career in the law and rose by degrees to the very pinnacle of the profession. He became a barrister at the age of 22, in 1613 he was made attorney general; and in 1617 he was made Lord Chancellor - the most powerful legal position in the land. However he held the position of Lord Chancellor for less than three years. In 1621 he was found guilty of taking bribes, fined and imprisoned. Following a partial royal pardon he was freed after only a few days in prison, but he was henceforth exiled from public life.

Bacon nursed a hugely ambitious scientific and philosophical vision. He dreamed of a society in which the systematic pursuit of scientific research was a central feature of public life, and in which large amounts of public funds were diverted to such research, in a manner that was at that time unheard of. What animated Bacon above all was the perception that knowledge is power (`Human knowledge and human power meet in one’ New Organon (1620), aphorism III). He was not concerned with scientific research for its own sake, but for the `relief of man’s estate’. His aim was to give humanity control over nature. Bacon’s scientific vision is graphically set out in the utopian fantasy New Atlantis.

Todays slides are here.

Essential reading extract from:

Bacon, F. New Atlantis (The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis) a version of which can be found on the web here:

http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Bacon.pdf

Read pages 29 ("And as we were...") to page 41 and then look at the list of things bacon thinks should be in a future science on p42 (which I've copied below as well).

Other texts

• • Crowther. J. G. Francis Bacon: The First Statesman of Science (London: Cresset, 1960)

  • (Entries in):

    • Russell, B. History of Western Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1961)

    • Urmson. J. O. Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (London: Hutchinson, 1960)

    • Collinson, D. Fifty Major Philosophers (London: Routledge)

We also looked at Bacon's four idols which are described from section 30 (or XXX) of his Novum Organum which you can find here.

Bacon's list is thus:

• • The prolongation of life.

  • The restitution of youth in some degree.

  • The retardation of age.

  • The curing of diseases counted incurable.

  • The mitigation of pain.

  • More easy and less loathsome purgings.

  • The increasing of strength and activity.

  • The increasing of ability to suffer torture or pain.

  • The altering of complexions, and fatness and leanness.

  • The altering of statures.

  • The altering of features.

  • The increasing and exalting of the intellectual parts.

  • Versions of bodies into other bodies

  • Making of new species.

  • Transplanting of one species into another.

  • Instruments of destruction, as of war and poison.

  • Exhilaration of the spirits, and putting them in good disposition.

  • Force of the imagination, either upon another body, or upon the

  • body itself.

  • Acceleration of time in maturations.

  • Acceleration of time in clarifications.

  • Acceleration of putrefaction.

  • Acceleration of decoction.

  • Acceleration of germination.

  • Making rich the composts for the earth.

  • Impressions of the air, and raising of tempests.

  • Great alteration; as in induration, emollition, &c.

  • Turning crude and watery substances into oily and unctuous

Look here for a summary of class discussion.