Chapter 56 Chapter 7 Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (Erancis Bacon, 1561-1626) is the founder of modern induction and the pioneer of the logical organization of scientific research procedures, so although his philosophy has many imperfections, he still has eternal important position. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Seal, and his aunt was the wife of Sir William Cecil (later Lord Bury); thus he was brought up in an atmosphere of state affairs.At the age of twenty-three Bacon became a member of the House of Commons and became an adviser to Essex.But once Essex fell out of favor, he helped prosecute Essex.For this he has always been severely reproached.Lytton Strachey, for example, in his book Elizabeth and Essex, portrays Bacon as a great ungrateful monster.This is very unfair.He served with him during the loyalty of Essex, but deserted him when continued loyalty to him would have constituted treason;

In spite of his desertion of Essex, he was not very favored during Queen Elizabeth's lifetime.But as soon as James came to the throne, his career began. In 1617 Bacon won the post of Minister of the Great Seal that his father had held, and in 1618 he became Lord Chancellor.But after only two years in this prominent position, he was charged with taking bribes from the litigants.Bacon admitted that the accusation was true, but only contended that the gift did not in any way affect his sentence.Anyone can have his own opinion on this point, because in another case there would be no evidence for what judgment he would have passed.He was sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds; to be imprisoned in the Tower of London for such a period as the king pleased; to be excommunicated from court for life, and unable to hold office.Only a very small part of this judgment has been carried out.He was not ordered to pay a fine, and he was confined in the Tower of London for only four days.But he was forced to give up official life and spend his remaining years writing important books.

In those days, the morality of the legal profession was somewhat slack and depraved.Almost every judge accepts gifts, and usually from both sides.Today we think it is appalling for a judge to take a bribe, but it is even more appalling to take a bribe and then rule against the briber.In those days, however, gifts were the customary practice, and the judges were "virtuous" in that they were not affected by gifts.It was a partisan squabble that Bacon suffered, not because he was particularly guilty.Although he was not a man of outstanding morals like his predecessor, Sir Thomas More, he was not particularly villainous.In terms of morality, he is an average person, and he is neither good nor bad compared with most of his contemporaries.

After five years of retirement, Bacon died of cold after freezing a chicken belly stuffed with snow. Bacon's most important work, "Advancement to e Learning-ing" (The Advancement to e Learning-ing) has a significant modern color in many points.He is generally considered to be the creator of the adage "Knowledge is power"; although there may be others who have said the same thing before, he speaks the adage with new emphasis.The whole basis of Bacon's philosophy is practical, which is to enable human beings to control the forces of nature by means of scientific discoveries and inventions.He advocated that philosophy should be separated from theology, and should not be closely mixed with theology like scholasticism.Bacon was orthodox; he was not one to quarrel with the government on such matters.However, although he thought that reason could prove the existence of God, he regarded everything else in theology as knowing only by revelation.

Indeed, he maintains that the triumph of faith is greatest when a doctrine appears utterly absurd to reason without the aid of revelation.Philosophy, however, should rely solely on reason.So he is a proponent of the "dual truth" theory of rational truth and revealed truth.This theory was advocated by some Averroes in the thirteenth century, but it was condemned by the Church. "Faith triumphs" is a dangerous maxim for orthodox believers.This maxim was used ironically by Bayle in the late seventeenth century, when he detailed all the counter-dialogues that reason could speak to an orthodox belief, and concluded: "Faith notwithstanding, the faith triumphs Greater and greater." To what extent Bacon's orthodoxy was genuine, there is no way of knowing.

How many philosophers have emphasized the importance of induction, which is the opposite of deduction, and Bacon is the first in the long lineage of philosophers with a scientific temperament.Bacon, like most of his successors, tried to find some kind of induction better than the so-called "mere enumeration induction".Simple enumeration induction can be illustrated by a fable as an example.In the old days a householder was required to record the names of all the heads of households in a village in Wales.The first householder he questioned was named William Williams; the second householder, the third, the fourth... also had this name; finally he himself said:

"It's boring! They're all called William Williams, apparently. I'll put 'em up like this, for a vacation." But he was wrong; there was only one named John Jones. This means that if you rely too unconditionally on pure enumeration induction, you may go astray. Bacon believed he had the means to make induction something superior to this.For example, he sought to discover the nature of heat, which he conceived (correctly) to consist of the rapid irregular motion of tiny parts of bodies.His method was to make a list of various hot bodies, a table of various cold bodies, and a table of bodies of variable heat.He hoped that the watches would exhibit certain properties which were always present in hot bodies, always absent in cold ones, and to varying degrees in bodies of variable heat.By this method he expected to arrive at general laws of the lowest degree of generality initially.From many such laws he wishes to find laws of second degree generality, and so on.A law thus proposed must be tested in a new situation; if it works in a new situation, it is confirmed in this context.

Certain cases, which allow us to decide between two theories that are likely to be true in the light of previous observations, are especially valuable; such cases are called "privileged" cases. Bacon not only looked down on deductive reasoning, but also despised mathematics, probably thinking that mathematics was poor in experimentation.He was viciously hostile to Aristotle, but thought very highly of Demancritus.Although he does not deny that the course of all things in nature shows the will of God, he opposes any teleological explanation in the field research of various phenomena.He maintains that everything must be explained as a necessary consequence of an effective cause.

Bacon's assessment of his method is that it tells us how to organize the observations on which science must be based.He said that we should not be like spiders, weaving silk from their own stomachs, nor like ants, collecting alone, but we must be like bees, collecting and sorting.This was unfair to the ants, but it was enough to explain what Bacon meant. One of the most famous parts of Bacon's philosophy is his enumeration of what he called "visions".He uses the word "phantasm" to refer to bad mental habits that lead people into error. He cites four illusions. "Racial illusions" are illusions inherent in human nature; he refers specifically to the habit of expecting an order in natural phenomena beyond what is actually to be found. "Cave visions" are the private preconceptions of individual researchers. "Market Illusion" is an illusion about the abuse of language to control people's hearts, and the mind is hard to get rid of the influence of words. The "theater illusion" is an illusion in relation to accepted systems of thought; of these, not to mention those of Aristotle and the Scholastics, constitute his most noteworthy instances.These are the errors of scholars: it is to think that some ready-made formula (such as the syllogism) can replace judgment in research.

Although it was science that Bacon was interested in, and although his general views were scientific, he ignored most of what was going on in science at the time.He denied Copernican's theory; speaking only of Copernicus himself, this is justifiable, because Copernicus did not put forward any solid arguments.But Kepler's "New Astronomy" (New Astronomy) was published in 1609, and Kepler should have convinced Bacon.Gilbert's study of magnetism was a brilliant example of induction, and Bacon admired him; However, he seems to have no knowledge of the achievements of Vesalius, the pioneer of modern anatomy.Surprisingly, Harvey is his personal doctor, and he seems oblivious to Harvey's work.Although Harvey published his blood circulation discoveries after Bacon's death, it was always assumed that Bacon would have known about his research activities.Harvey didn't think highly of Bacon, saying "he wrote philosophy like a justice".If Bacon hadn't been so concerned about fame and fortune, he would certainly have written better.

Bacon's inductive method is flawed because it does not pay enough attention to hypotheses.Bacon hoped that simply by collating the observations, the correct hypothesis would emerge, but that was hardly the case.Generally speaking, hypothesizing is the most difficult part of scientific work, and it is also the part that requires great skill.So far, no method has been found to create hypotheses in a prescribed manner.Usually, having some kind of hypothesis is a necessary prerequisite for collecting facts, because the choice of facts requires some way to determine whether the facts are relevant to the problem.Without this kind of thing, a mass of facts alone is helpless. Deduction plays a bigger role in science than Bacon thought.When a hypothesis has to be tested, there is often a long deductive process from the hypothesis to some conclusion that can be tested by observation.This deduction is usually a mathematical deduction, so Bacon underestimated the importance of mathematics in scientific research at this point. The problem of simple enumeration and induction is still unsolved today.When it comes to the details of scientific research, Bacon is absolutely correct in rejecting simple enumeration and induction.For in dealing with details we may assume general laws, from which, as soon as we think them sound, we can build up more or less powerful methods.John Stuart Mill set up four norms of induction, as long as the law of causality is assumed, the four norms can be used effectively.But Mill also has to admit that the law of causality itself can only be trusted on the basis of simple enumeration and induction.What the theoretical organization of science does is reduce all the lower generalizations into a few very general ones—perhaps only one.Such general inductions, being confirmed by many instances, are considered to be justified in respect of them, by mere enumerative inductions.This state of affairs was extremely unsatisfactory, but neither Bacon nor any of his successors found a way out of it.