Bacon’s New Atlantis is a strange and alienating text on a first read because the writing is archaic and because of the way it goes about its aims. It is clear, at least, that it aims to promote a view of how to go about gaining knowledge of the world. But it does this through a fable.
In the face of a difficult text, the first move is to work out what its aims are (what does it aim to show?) and to assess the arguments it contains to advance these. In this case, being a mere fable, there are few arguments. But it is possible to see how Bacon’s assumptions about the kind of knowledge we should aim for; the methods we should use to get it; and its value are all related / all hang together.
But first, to demonstrate that Bacon also had a more philosophical approach to issues about knowledge (akin to Plato’s worries about shadows in the cave) in his book Novum Organum we looked at his four Idols: distorting ideas we are naturally prone to.
Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself
Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man.
Idols of the Market Place are formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other.
Idols of Theatre: various dogmas of philosophies
We looked briefly at these to work out whether they were really distinct, whether they were practical worries or merely a kind of philosophical artefact, and how general they were. Would another species – intelligent Martians, perhaps – suffer them also? It seems plausible. They would also have particular kinds of sensory system and innate habits of thought (tribe), would be subject to individual life histories (cave), would speak a language (market place) and, presumably, be subject to false theories (theatre). So it seems plausible that Bacon has drawn attention to some general sources of doubt. Linking it back to Plato, Bacon thus provides some reason to believe in a gap between shadows and world.
(Questions remain. Here are two.
Why should we think that our sensory systems or habits of thought are distorting? One reason comes from the primary / secondary quality distinction. Since C17 many people have taken secondary qualities such as colour to be unreal, essentially connected to our particular way of seeing the world.
Why should we think that language distorts our contact with the world? It is true that the distinctions we draw with every day words simplifying things – the word ‘table’ applies to all sorts of different sorts of tables, eg. – but we can also talk about particular tables (by saying ‘That table!’) or draw finer distinctions. But simplification need not be distortion. Well one reason stems from a natural Cartesian idea that whilst we know our own minds directly, we have to infer what others are thinking from the mere noises they make, noises we have to interpret. Suddenly that all sounds like a risky set of inferences. How do we know what they mean or think? And if that’s a problem, then all the knowledge we get via language - testimony – looks suspect.)
Back to New Atlantis!
We looked at the kind of methods for arriving at knowledge that Bacon describes: a kind of proto-Royal Society for finding out about the world with groups of different people doing different but related tasks. A civil servant’s approach. It is very different to Descartes’ description of how to improve knowledge: sitting alone in a study and thinking very hard.
This prompts the question, what reason is there to think that those methods would work? Bacon does not provide an argument but it seems to be part of a view in which the methods for gaining knowledge are themselves subject to a kind of scientific inquiry. So one can use science to find out about the world but also to find out about science. It is an empirical matter – a matter of how the world works – what the best ways to gain knowledge are. In philosophy these days we call this sort of view ‘naturalistic’.
A second important feature – both of the description of the methods and the wish list for knowledge at the end of the New Atlantis – is that the knowedge concerned is all empirical knowledge, knowledge of the natural world.
A third feature is that it is clear that Bacon thinks that this knowledge will be good for humantity because it is instrumentally valuable. It gives us power over things.
These three features of Bacon’s view fit together: knowledge is of the natural world; is instrumentally valuable; and the methods used to gain knowledge can themselves be studied empirically. It seems correct that knowledge of the natural word can indeed give us power over things but also that it is open to disovery how to gain such knowledge. Knowledge of the world is also a natural feature.
So if we want assess Bacon’s view the obvious question is whether this sort of knowledge (the sort that fits the three features above) is the only kind of knowledge there is? Is there more to knowledge – more sorts of knowledge – than natural scientific knowledge?