Crossing the Pillars of Hercules: Francis Bacon, the Scientific Revolution and the New World
The significance of the connection between the discovery of the New World and scientific discovery has been one that has been remarked on since the time of Francis Bacon. The article assesses such claims made by Bacon and his contemporaries in the light o
- PDF / 361,547 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 14 Downloads / 246 Views
Crossing the Pillars of Hercules: Francis Bacon, the Scientific Revolution and the New World John Gascoigne
J. Gascoigne (*) School of Humanities, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] O. Gal and R. Chen-Morris (eds.), Science in the Age of Baroque, International Archives of the History of Ideas 208, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4807-1_9, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
217
218
J. Gascoigne
Abstract The significance of the connection between the discovery of the New World and scientific discovery has been one that has been remarked on since the time of Francis Bacon. The article assesses such claims made by Bacon and his contemporaries in the light of the recent historiography of the subject. In doing so it analyses a number of the notable features of the Scientific Revolution: the scientific role of the pioneering exploring nations, Spain and Portugal; the place of natural history in the formulation of early modern science; and the interconnections between the sciences associated with navigation and the theoretical developments that were most central to our accepted understanding of the Scientific Revolution. The article concludes with an analysis of the limitations of the term “Scientific Revolution” in accommodating the scientific discoveries associated with the discovery of the New World particularly in the realm of natural history with its accumulation of detail which was so much a part of the Baroque mentality.
Introduction Few illustrations capture better the high hopes held for the infant scientific movement of the seventeenth century than the frontispiece to Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration (1620). After long centuries in awe of the achievement of the Ancients, Europe now moves beyond their realm symbolised by the Pillars of Hercules, the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The pillars which once marked the end of the known world now massively frame an instance of the ingenuity and might of the Moderns in the form of a top-of-the-line vessel with its sails swelled out returning, one assumes, from a successful and lucrative voyage to the New World. In the distance is another vessel beginning to make its way in the opposite direction, another assertion of the Moderns’ command of oceans and whole tracts of the globe virtually unknown to the Ancients. Beneath the illustration is the motto, “Multi pertransibunt & augebitur scientia” (Daniel 12:4)—“Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge will be increased,” a highly charged reference to the chiliastic text from the Book of Daniel with its reference to the “last ages of the world” and to mystical revelations. The fact that Bacon chose such an illustration for a work dedicated to the advance of the scientific principles which he saw as replacing those derived from antiquity makes apparent the extent to which Bacon discerned a parallel between the discovery of the New World and the advance of the new science. Both involved going beyond the boundaries set by Antiquity an
Data Loading...
