In order to have earned the occasional titles of “father of empiricism” or “father of experimental philosophy,” Sir Francis Bacon certainly had to make noteworthy and enduring contributions to scientific thought. His inventions are not drawn out on paper with schematics and did not directly address human plant anatomy, the cosmos or create a steam-powered machine, but are instead philosophical in nature, allowing perhaps an even greater and more impactful and broad-reaching legacy in virtually every field of science, technology and related subjects.
Francis Bacon was born in 1561 in London into an educated family. He was the second son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was the Lord Keeper of the Seal and Lady Ann Cooke Bacon, the educated daughter of a leading humanist (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Francis Bacon was homeschooled before attending Trinity College in Cambridge in 1573 followed by Grey’s Inn, where he began to study law. During his studies, Bacon was sharply critical of the curriculum, eventually saying that he was there,
“amidst men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator (Bacon & Montagu, 1859, p.xix).
Francis Bacon’s life was characterized by essentially two separate yet interconnected lives, as described by Bacon biographer Perez Zagorin (1999, p.3). One was focused on politics and power while the other held philosophy and scientific inquiry at its center.
Upon his father’s death while Francis was still a teenager, he was left with little inheritance and eventually began a political career in the House of Commons, where he stayed on as a member of Parliament for 37 years. Francis Bacon attempted to outline a new system of sciences that emphasized empirical methods but his thoughts on science reform were not met with enthusiasm from the Queen or his powerful maternal uncle. In a 1592 letter to this uncle, Francis Bacon talks about his ambitions (excerpt taken from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):
I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is the thing I greatly affect. (Bacon 1857–74, VIII, 109)
Francis Bacon struggled financially throughout much of his early life and eventually rose to greater power during the reign of James VI of Scotland, who succeeded Queen Elizabeth. Francis Bacon was knighted in 1603 and remained busy in the realm of British politics while still writing treatises that would pave the way for later works like Novum Organum and Instauratio Magna. He rose even further politically, eventually being named Viscount of St. Alban before being removed from Parliament unjustly as a scapegoat. Although he lost his seat in Parliament, this allowed Bacon to spend the last five years of his life wholly devoted to his philosophical pursuits.
As early as 1603, Bacon was challenging tradition within his Valerius Terminus, where he renounced mixtures of divinity and natural philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
While there was not necessarily a complete rejection of Aristotle, Bacon did oppose the overly-humanistic interpretation of Aristotle, which eschewed the structural order of nature in favor of dialectics and syllogisms and the metaphysical treatment of nature.
Bacon extended his criticism of the scholastic emphasis on deductive logic and Renaissance alchemy and other fields that utilized methods or techniques based on occasional insight rather than used methods that held up under investigation. Francis Bacon formulated his doctrine of the idols, which has proven significant in the history of theories of error and contributed importantly to empiricism as it is recognized today. In The Advancement of Learning, where Bacon discusses judgment, there is mention of proofs and demonstration.
Novum Organum (1620) was Sir Francis Bacon’s most well-known work. In it, he attempts to tie various fields of science together by laying out how they were related to each other, paving the way for a new ways of thinking about the organization of the sciences. Within this work, Bacon also provided short aphorisms, or general truths, that served and continue to serve as a strong backbone for empiricism. He criticizes some of the historical and contemporary ways of thinking:
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. So it does more harm than good. (XII)
Another powerful aphorism included in this collection that no doubt has been reflected upon by any scientist that needs to determine the truth behind any assumptions an experiment or their own assumptions are built upon goes as follows:
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engraving of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress. (XXXI)
Bacon was most well known while he was alive, or at least during the earlier part of his life, for his political presence and impact, and his contribution to scientific thought grew and spread most extensively in his later years and after his death. Since Bacon’s time and even to the present day, scientists and scientific advancement, as well as the general population, have used and benefited from Bacon’s theories and ideas about inductive reasoning and scientific thought.
Contemporaries of Bacon such as Sir Thomas Brown, “one of the first physicians and philosophers of his, or, indeed, of any time, who was devoting his life to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors (Montagu, 1859, lxii)” drew on Baconian theory in his work.
When the Royal Society in London was formed under Charles II in 1660, the philosophy and writings of Francis Bacon, especially as pertaining to the interaction and interrelatedness of different fields of science, influenced the establishment of the Royal Society of London and he is generally considered one of the founding influences of the Society (Martin, 1992).
It was when the contributions of Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes began to merge that the full scientific method that exists today as common knowledge, at least in scientific and academic realms, took shape.
Voltaire held Sir Francis Bacon very highly, calling him the “father of experimental philosophy.” In a very resonating passage, Voltaire said the following about Bacon’s Novum Organum:
“The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at this time, is the most useless and the least read, I mean his Novum Scientarium Organum. This is the scaffold with which the new philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it at least, the scaffold was no longer of service. (Voltaire, c. 1778).
Voltaire even goes far enough to attribute many, if not all, of the “sublime” inventions or techniques that were discovered prior to Sir Francis Bacon’s contribution to experimental philosophy like the maritime compass, spectacles, and gunpowder to chance. When Voltaire says this he is, perhaps, drawing on Bacon’s own thoughts. In Novum Organum, Bacon’s Aphorism VIII goes as follows:
Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to science; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.
Aaron A. Toscano (2012), in a book about rhetoric in technical communication, discus, at length, the rhetoric Francis Bacon used in his writing, other analysis of it and the way his rhetoric reflected his goals, his contemporary culture and who he was attempting to influence. According to Toscano, Bacon’s works are “rhetorically laden technical communication (p.10). Bacon was writing for the elite philosophers and scientists who controlled the scientific machine and influenced education, rather than the uneducated masses or non-scientific elite. Toscano also links the way Bacon communicated to modern technical communication, with the modern view that technical communication ought to have a didactic quality.
Bacon wields rhetoric in a certain, calculated way and, according to Paulo Rossi (1968), Bacon thought that it had the function “to extend the empire of reason and defend it against every onslaught, even if in a different field and with different tools (p.178).”
Plethora scientists throughout history have no doubt directly or indirectly studied and learned from the rhetoric used by Sir Francis Bacon and continue to use similar styles of writing intended to teach or influence.
Sometimes, even the industrial revolution or the technological advancements that made the industrial revolution possible, are attributed to Sir Francis Bacon. In his Instauratio Magna (1623) he calls for inventions and advancements that can improve human well-being:
And when we have cleared these points, and made it plain what is the Nature of Things, and what that of the Mind, then we think we shall have prepared and decked the marriage bed for the Mind and the Universe, under the eye of Divine Goodness. Let the prayer of our bridal song be, that from this marriage may spring aids for mankind, and progeny of Inventions, which shall overcome, to some extent, and subdue our needs and miseries.
Although Bacon was and continues to be respected, in general, for his theories, critics did find many flaws in his philosophies. The flaws that were discovered, however, pale in comparison to Bacon’s great contributions to science and technology in the centuries following his life. Sir Francis Bacon found flaws in and discounted the faulty scientific views that drew on Aristotle’s philosophy and were perpetuated by his predecessors and peers, advocating a focus on empirical observation. This push for empirical observation and a vigorous denunciation of misconceptions stimulated the Scientific Revolution.
Truly, Sir Francis Bacon’s call for inductive reasoning and empirical observation drove further scientific thought among his contemporaries and the calculated experimentation and successful realization of new scientific inventions and technological advancements in the centuries following his life and death. The need for science to rely on basic observation and be constantly vigilant for idols or false assumptions will continue to guide science and technology for as long as humanity exists.
References
Bacon, F. & Montagu, B. (1859). The works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: With a life of the author by Basil Montagu. Philadelphia: Parry and McMillan.
Bacon, F. First book of aphorisms. Retrieved from http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/bacon-aphor.asp
Klein, J. (2012). Francis Bacon. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/#Bio
Martin, J. (1992). Francis Bacon, the state, and the reform of natural philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rossi, P. (2013). Francis Bacon: From magic to science. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Toscano, A.A. (2012). Marconi’s wireless and the rhetoric of a new technology. New York: Springer.
Voltaire. (c. 1778). Letter XII: On the Lord Bacon. Letters on the English. Retrieved from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778voltaire-bacon.asp
Zagorin, Perez. (1999). Francis Bacon. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
