Bacon on the Origin of Error and Prejudice
Bacon’s Wisdom of the Ancients (1609) is his most popular work next to his Essays (1597, 1612, 1625). It deals exclusively with ancient myths. This is the best indication of the great change in popular taste between our age and the late Renaissance. Today
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Bacon on the Origin of Error and Prejudice
Bacon’s Wisdom of the Ancients (1609) is his most popular work next to his Essays (1597, 1612, 1625). It deals exclusively with ancient myths. This is the best indication of the great change in popular taste between our age and the late Renaissance. Today we find no use to reading meanings into ancient myths; the appeal of this literature to the readers of the late Renaissance makes no sense to us. My discussion here takes the concerns of Bacon and his readers as given while relating it to his view of science and in particular his view of scientific research and what will make for its success, even though the value of his studies of myths is obviously more literary and historical than methodological. It is the irony of history that the artistic merit of the book is what raised suspicions as to its original authorship, suspicion that research on it fully justifies (Lemmi 1933). Yet our concern with his view of research is a concern with what was decidedly peculiar to him. Spedding reports (Works, 6, 609) that this work won great popularity at the time. The major points of it occur both in the Advancement of Learning (1605) and in the Novum Organum (1620a, b, c) that were very popular too, not to mention Beginnings and Origins of Things (1624) that supplied material for Ellis’ research into Bacon’s metaphysics. This is not to say that all of Bacon’s early followers were as mystically oriented as Bacon was. Presumably, only some of them took his interpretations of the ancient myths to mean that they are literally true. I follow here studies of R. F. Jones (1951) of the serious dispute about the myth of the fall and decay of the early seventeenth century. On any case, clearly, Bacon’s early followers endorsed his major myth, the myth that the operation of the induction-making machine is restricted to those who obey the authority of their senses. Lemmi’s most interesting comparative research into Bacon’s mythology made it quite clear that Bacon was much more serious about the myths than his later followers allowed: he genuinely believed in myths— in the fashion in which myths are objects of belief, of course—this in agreement with both Ellis and Spedding. We should be more understanding about such things. My own interest here is in the metaphysical idea behind these myths. It survived them and became a part of the Baconian idol of the market place. According to J. Agassi, The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 298, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_5, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Bacon on the Origin of Error and Prejudice
Bacon, God created the universe and the mind on one schedule, making learning most easy and natural, so that wisdom prevailed.1 Then the Fall of Man came to pass. People wrongly made anticipations, speculated, interpreted facts so as to agree with their pet views, grew impatient, weak-minded, and eager for fame; they became impostors. Since then the
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