British professor takes up cause of Francis Bacon, scientific revolutionary

How should we think about historic figures who continue to be relevant to philosophical, scientific and political thinking today?

Steve Fuller, a professor of social epistemology at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, UK, takes up this question with regard to English scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a prominent intellectual of his time, whose work spanned politics, philosophy, and science. Fuller's essay appears in a special 2021 issue of Epistemology & Philosophy of Science devoted to Bacon (Vol. 58, Issue 3, 2021). 

There are two different ways of looking at important intellectuals like Bacon, Fuller writes. The first is seeing them only in the context of their contemporary thought, or second, seeing them as having continuing relevance. The title of his essay, "The Prophetic Bacon," indicates that he is solidly an advocate of the latter approach.

Bacon's relevance today

Fuller told Current Science Daily that Francis Bacon was "a pivotal--arguably the most pivotal--figure in the Scientific Revolution that Europe underwent in the 17th Century. Bacon's legacy was very much present in the establishment of the first modern scientific society, the Royal Society of London. My paper is about what Bacon can still teach us today." 

Bacon contributed in many fields, Fuller said, adding, "Bacon was the personal lawyer to King James I but he is better known as the person who supervised the first complete translation of the Bible into English and the first person to formulate what we now call the scientific method."

Fuller pointed out why Bacon's ideas are still relevant today. 

"Unlike most of his contemporaries, Bacon believed that technology enabled humans to increase their knowledge and power over the world. Indeed, he saw experimentation as an extension of the human senses in ways that would resonate with thinkers much closer to our own time, including the 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan and today's transhumanists," Fuller said.

Why did he think it was important to write his views of Bacon? 

Fuller said "2020 marked the 400th anniversary of the major work that Bacon published in his lifetime, namely, Novum Organum, which literally means a new way of organizing the pursuit of knowledge. A generally striking feature of Bacon's writing style is that he seemed to be addressing the future at least as much as he was addressing the present."

A contrasting argument

Fuller contrasts his view of Bacon to that of philosopher Daniel Garber, whose essay appears in the same issue of Epistemology & Philosophy of Science. He wrote, "Garber takes a rather conventional historical approach to Bacon, which sees him as primarily addressing his contemporaries--namely, the Scholastics (members of religious orders who managed and taught at the universities of the time). These people thought about knowledge very much in what we would now regard as 'metaphysical' terms, and Bacon often conducted himself in these terms as well."

"However, " Fuller continued, "Bacon was always struggling to break away from Scholastic discourse in order to talk about knowledge in a new way. As a result he used many vivid analogies and metaphors, many quite witty. We nowadays regard Bacon as one of the early masters of the English language."

"All of this seems to be lost on Garber, who very much embeds Bacon in his time.

Bacon's contemporary views

Fuller described Bacon's conception of knowledge in more detail to substantiate his argument that Bacon must be seen more than simply in the context of the contemporary thought of his day:

"A mark of Bacon's long-term influence is that his conception of knowledge makes more sense now than it did to his contemporaries," he said. "Most of Bacon's contemporaries regarded knowledge as a state of mind, namely, one aligned with reality, which typically bore some clear relationship to God as the creator. A secular version of this idea is still taken for granted by philosophers." 

"In contrast, Bacon believed that knowledge was basically something produced--say, in a laboratory as the result of an experiment," he added. "In this conception, the scientist does not possess knowledge as a state of his or her own mind, but as something external to the scientist's mind. Words like 'finding', 'discovery,' and 'invention' capture this rather objectified conception of knowledge."

"Moreover, unlike the authority granted to ancient and holy books, which are also arguably 'objectified knowledge,' Bacon stressed that one should be able to produce the knowledge for oneself," Fuller said. "Hence the great stress he placed on the idea of a 'scientific method.'"

Fuller concludes with his argument for Bacon as a prophet. 

"I argue against the sort of `contextualism' that artificially constrains the `transcendental' horizons of a thinker such as Bacon," Fuller said. "[He] was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know." 

Steve Fuller, "The Prophetic Bacon:

Response to Garber," Epistemology & Philosophy of Science,

Volume 58, Issue 3, 2021.

DOI https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158345