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Francis Bacon's Concept of Objectivity and the Idols of the Mind

Author(s): Perez ZagorinSource: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 379-393Published by: on behalf ofCambridge University Press British Society for the History ofScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370Accessed: 23-02-2016 22:36 UTC

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2/16

BJHS,

2001, 34, 379-393

Francis Bacon's concept of objectivity and the

idols

of the mind

PEREZ

ZAGORIN*

Abstract.

This

paper

examines the

concept

of

objectivity

traceable

in

Francis Bacon's

natural

philosophy. After some historical

background

on this

concept,

it considers the

question

of

whether it is not an

anachronism

to attribute

such

a

concept

to

Bacon,

since the word

'objectivity'

is

a

later

coinage

and does not

appear anywhere

in his

writings.

The

essay gives

reasons for

answering

this

question

in the

negative,

and then criticizes the accounts

given

of

Bacon's

understanding

of

objectivity by

Lorraine Daston and

Julie

Robin

Solomon.

It

argues

that

this

understanding

is most

directly and

fully expressed

in his

discussion of

the

idols of the mind. In

this

connection,

the paper

notes

Bacon's

critical

attitude

to

sixteenth-century scepticism

and its

relevance to the

idea of

objectivity implicit

in

his comments

on

the idols.

In

conclusion,

the

paper

argues that Bacon

was

not a pure

empiricist

and describes the

place assigned

to

theories and

hypotheses

in

his natural

philosophy.

In

contemporary philosophical and

other discourse, the

term

'objectivity' is mainly used

with three

principal meanings

in

mind,

all of which

are

related

to one

another in

the sense

of

sharing family

resemblancesas described

by Wittgenstein

in

his well-known

remarks

on

meaning and language games.' As

commonly understood, objectivity can denote any one

of the

following: first,

the true

and

certain

knowledge of a

thing, property or state of

affairs;

second,

a method of

enquiry

designed

and

competent

to

elicit a true knowledge,

understanding or explanation of a

thing, property or state of affairs; third, a type of

judgement

or

mental

disposition

on

the

part

of

scientists, scholars, moralists, philosophers

and other

investigators

that sets

aside

prejudice, partiality

and

predetermined

answers in

the

process

of

any

kind of

enquiry

and the

appraisal

of

its

results.

All

three of these

definitions areamong those attributedto or implied by the word 'objective' and its cognate

term

'objectivity'

in

the

tenth,

1994 edition of

my

Merriam Webster's

Collegiate

Dictionary,

and

may

also

be found

among

the definitions

of

'objective'

in the

Shorter

Oxford

English Dictionary; although

framed to

my purpose,

they

also

correspond closely

to

the

several

meanings

of

objectivity

which

Allan

Megill

has summarized in

his useful

discussion

in

an

issue,

devoted

to the

question

of

objectivity,

of the

journal

Annals

of

Scholarship.2

While

thinking

and

language

are

obviously very closely

connected,

it

is

certainly possible

*

2990 Beaumont Farm Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22901, USA.

1

Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn., New York, 1970, nos. 66-7.

2 Allan Megill, 'Four senses of objectivity', Annals of

Scholarship (1991), 8, 301-20. Megill's

essay is the

introduction

to

a symposium

of

articles on objectivity

in

this

and

the

succeeding issues of Annals

of Scholarship

(1992), 9, nos. 1-2,

later published as Rethinking Objectivity (ed. Allan Megill), Durham, 1994.

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3/16

380 Perez Zagorin

to conceive of an idea without having one specific word

for it. In the Western intellectual

tradition, some of the ingredients presently constituting

the concept of objectivity long

antedated the time of Francis

Bacon and can be traced back to classical antiquity, despite

the fact that

in

neither Greek

nor Latin is there a particular word that designates this

concept. Terms like the Greek di'kaiosand the Latin aequum,

however, whose meanings

included fairness and lack of bias as well as what is right

or equitable, contained distinct

connotations that are clearly part of the semantic field pertaining

to our word 'objectivity'

and its uses

in

various contexts.

In

Greek philosophy

an awareness of what

might

be called

ontological objectivity as

the determination of the way things really are was implicit

in

the

speculations and enquiriesof some of the pre-Socratic

hinkers, Plato and Aristotle, which

aimed at

attaining

true

and

certain knowledge

of the necessaryand universal features

of

reality or the natural world. Aristotle's enquiry into the nature of being, for example,

which he pursued

in

his Metaphysics, and the theory and

logic

of

scientific explanation

outlined

in

his Posterior Analytics, which explains that

we possess 'scientific knowledge

when we ... know the cause on which the fact depends, as

the cause of that fact and of no

other

and, further,

that the fact could

not be other

than

it

is',3 presupposed

a

type

of

knowledge that is unconditioned, necessary, absolute

and, hence, entirely objective.

Similarly,

a

perception

of

at

least a

part

of what is involved

in

historical

objectivity

underlies the claim

of

Greek and

Roman historians to describe the facts and

explain

their

causes

truly

and

impartially.

Thucydides'

observations on the

method of

writing

history,

which he

placed

near the beginning

of his

History of

the

Peloponnesian War,

his comments

on the early history of Greece and his deep probing into the causes of the war between

Athens

and

Sparta, clearly

intimate or

envisage

the idea of a

self-consciously

critical

and

objective

historical

knowledge.4

A

consciousness

of

objectivity

is likewise evident

in

the

pledge of the Roman historian Tacitus

to relate the events of the EmperorAugustus' reign

without either

passion

or

partiality ('sine

ira et

studio');

and also

in his

denial that

his

political

elevation under the

emperors Vespasian,

Titus and Domitian had

impaired

his

impartiality as a historian who

held the truth to be inviolable.5

When we

pass

from the ancient world

to the

sixteenth

century

and Francis Bacon

(b.

1561),

we observe that the word

'objectivity'

does not

appear anywhere

in

his

writings,

since at that period

it did not

yet

exist

in

English

or

any

other

European language.

As

several scholars have

pointed

out,

its lexical

origin

is the non-classical Latin

adjective

'

objectivus',

which

medieval and

early

modern scholastic

philosophers

used in the

phrase

3 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b8-12, or Book I, Chapter

2.

4 Thucydides, History, 1.1-21. When Thucydides comes

to tell about the plague at Athens in the second year

of the war, he says he will leave

aside all speculation as to its origin but simply describe its

nature and symptoms;

History, 2.48. This statement, it is worth noting,

furnished the inspiration for the best known epitome

of the

principle of historical objectivity

in the nineteenth century as formulated n the famous comment

of Leopold von

Ranke that the task of history was not to judge the past

but to show what had actually

happened ('wie es

eigentlich gewesen'). Ranke's dictum is an almost direct quotation

from

Thucydides

and appears

in

the

Preface

to his own History of the Latin and Germanic Nations from 1494-1514, Leipzig, 1824, and also recurs in some

of his other

writings;

see the passages

from Ranke

reprinted

n

Fritz

Stern,

The Varieties of History, Cleveland,

1956, 57, 58, and for Ranke's

use of Thucydides' remark, see M. I. Finley, 'How it really

was', Ancient History

and

Models, London,

1985, 47-8, 116

n. 5.

5

Tacitus, Annals, 1.1;

idem, Histories,

1.1.





4/16

Francis Bacon's concept of

objectivity 381

conceptus objectivus

to

signify

an

external

object

insofar as it is

present

to the

mind.6 Not

until about the

mid-nineteenthcentury

and after did the word

'objective'

enter

the

English

language with some of the

meanings

it

presentlypossesses,

while

'objectivity'

is even more

of a

latecomer to the

philosopher's

lexicon.7 This raises the

problem

of whether it is not

a

dangerous anachronism to

speak

of a

conception

of

objectivity

in

reference either to

Bacon or to any of the

philosophers or historians of

antiquity.

The short answer to this

question

is that

in

trying

to

understand and

analyse

the beliefs and ideas of

past

societies

and

cultures, historians and

philosophers

must not

only learn to

comprehend

the

language

and

concepts by which these societies and cultures

understood themselves and reflected

upon the

world,

but also

are often obliged to

apply

to them other

and later

concepts

of

which

they were

ignorant

or

only

partially

and

inadequately possessed.

Prior to the

emergence of the modern term 'objectivity' and its multiple semantic affiliations

constituting an entire

family

of

meanings,

it seems

to

be

undeniable that notions

approximating

some of

the

contemporary meanings

of

objectivity

are to be found in

Western

philosophy,

law and

historiography,

for

example.

If

there is a risk of

anachronism

in

talking of objectivity in

connection with Bacon or any

of his

philosophic predecessors,

the

same risk is

equally present when we

speak,

as

everyone

unavoidably does,

of

science

in

ancient

Greece or during the

Renaissance, since at neither period

was there any

word

or

idea

synonymous with all the meaningswe

have

in

mind

when we use the

word 'science'

today.

Indeed, historians of whatever field would find

their task

impossible

if

they were

barred from

using concepts and

terminology unknown to those

whom

they study.

In

such

cases of conceptual translation from the present to the past, I believe that historians and

philosophers

need not worry about

misleading readers by anachronism

provided they

take

care to

make the

necessary

semantic distinctions and to

remain clear

about what they

are

doing.

In

the case of

Bacon, while he was

ignorant of

objectivity as a distinctive

term, certain

aspects

of the

concept

were nevertheless

familiar to

him in

other

language.

Thus he

was

thoroughly

acquainted with objectivity

in

the sense of

impartiality

as one

of the

requirements

of

truth and justice

in

both

law and history, and

sought to

practise

it

himself

in

his activities as a judge,

a writer on

jurisprudence and a historian.8 An

awareness of

objectivity is no less implicit in his discussion of the affiliation between rhetoric and the

6 Scholastic

and neoscholastic

thinkers distinguishedthe

conceptus

objectivus

from

the

conceptus formalis,

which denoted an

object

that is

solely

in the

mind and thus has

only an intellectual

existence;

see the

excellent

discussion by Michael

Ayers, 'Ideas and

objective being',

in

The

Cambridge

History of

Seventeenth-Century

Philosophy (ed. Daniel

Garber and Michael

Ayers),

2

vols.,

Cambridge, 1998, ii,

Chapter 30, and the

remarks on

the

terminological

and

intellectual

ancestry

of the

modern idea of

objectivity

in

Peter

Dear,

'From

truth to

disinterestedness n

the seventeenth

century', Social Studies

of Science

(1992),22, 619-31; and Lorraine

Daston,

'Objectivity and

the escape from

perspective', in ibid.,

597-618.

7

See the discussion in

Daston, op.

cit.

(6).

The first

edition of the

Oxford English

Dictionary

had no

separate

entry

for

'objectivity'

and

cited

it

only in

connection with the definition of

'objective'. The

second edition lists

it separately with the following brief definition: 'The quality or character of being objective; external reality;

objectiveness.' It is

striking that there

is also no separate

entry for

'objectivity'

in

such

major works of reference

as the

Encyclopedia

of Philosophy, the

Dictionary of the

History of

Ideas,

the

Encyclopaedia

Britannica, the old

Encyclopedia of

the Social

Sciences and

its successor the International

Encyclopedia

of

the

Social Sciences.

8

I

have

discussed

Bacon's treatment of these

subjects

in

my book, Francis

Bacon,

Princeton,

1998,

187-220.





5/16

382

Perez Zagorin

imagination

and of the latter's

role as an

instrumentof both

reason and passion.9 It is

also

a

prominent feature of the

political

reflections and comments on

worldly problems

and the

architecture of

fortune

contained

in

his

essays,

in

which his

mastery of

objectivity

in

the

decipherment of human

designs and

political

stratagems

is

akin to that of

Tacitus and

Machiavelli.' When he

observes

in

The

Advancement

of

Learning 'that we are much

beholden to

Machiaveland

others, that

write what men do and

not what they ought to

do',

he is praising the

Italian thinker for his

realism and objectivity

as an

analyst of political

conduct. But it

was

in

his natural

philosophy or

theory

of

science and the

investigation

of

nature that

Bacon

addressed the question

of objectivity as a

methodological problem

most

fully and

directly, and with an

originality that

went well

beyond

preceding

understandings

of the

concept. Students

of

Bacon's

thought,

however,

have

generally failed

to give his treatment of this subjectthe attention it

deserves.12

To this comment, though,

there are two

exceptions,

the first an

essay

by

Lorraine

Daston,

the second

a recent book

by Julie Robin

Solomon, each of which

attempts to

explain

the

Baconian view of

objectivity.'3

It

was Daston

who

first introduced the

question

of

objectivity

into

the discussion of

Bacon's natural

philosophy as a

part

of her

wide-ranging

project

of

investigating

the

history

and

evolution of the

principle

of

objectivity

in

the

natural sciences.'4

In

her

view,

his idea

of objectivity centred

on

the

new significance his

natural

philosophy

ascribed to

facts, independentof all theories or

interpretations,

as

the core of

knowledge.

'Seventeenth-

century objectivity', she

states,

'insofar as one can use the

word for this

period

without

anachronism, was about facts and

nothing

but the

facts'. 5

Taking

note of Bacon's

conviction that

natural

history

as collections of

particular

facts must

provide

the

indispensable basis of natural

philosophy,

she sees

in him

the

'pivotal

figure

in

the

rehabilitation of

facts as

knowledge'; 6

she

further observes that under

his influence

9

Zagorin, op. cit. (8),

180-1.

10

Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 133-46.

11 The Advancement of

Learning (ed. James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, and

Douglas D. Heath), Works, 15

vols.,

Cambridge, MA, 1863, vi, 327.

12 The

present writer's recent

book,

Francis

Bacon,

touched on the

subject

only briefly

and

inadequately

(Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 82-6 ), and it has likewise been neglectedin the importantstudies by Peter Urbach, Francis

Bacon's

Philosophy of Science: An Account and a

Reappraisal, La Salle, IL, 1987, and Antonio

Perez-Ramos,

Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's

Knowledge Tradition, Oxford,

1988, the latter of which is

probably

the

most significant contribution in recent years to the

historical understanding of Bacon's theory of

science.

Objectivity

is also not

mentioned

in

any

of the

essays

in

The

Cambridge

Companion

to Bacon

(ed.

Markku

Peltonen), Cambridge, 1996.

13

Lorraine

Daston, 'Baconian

facts,

academic

civility,

and the

prehistory of

objectivity',

Annals

of

Scholarship (1991), 8, 337-63; Julie Robin Solomon,

Objectivity

in the

Making:

Francis

Bacon

and

the Politics

of

Inquiry, Baltimore,

1998.

Mary

Tiles and

Jim Tiles,

in their An

Introduction

to

Historical

Epistemology:

The

Authority of Knowledge,

Oxford, 1993, Chapter 2,

also include some comments on Bacon's idea of

objectivity,

but it is not

the focal

point

of their discussion.

14

Daston's other essays

in

this

project include 'Objectivity and the escape from

perspective' (op.

cit.

(6));

'Fear and loathing of the imagination in science', Daedalus (1998), 127, 73-95; and in collaboration with Peter

Galison,

'The

image

of

objectivity', Representations (1992) 40,

81-128. I

have also

had

the benefit of

seeing

Daston's unpublished

1993

article,

'The

moralized

objectivities

of

nineteenth-century

science'.

15 Daston, op. cit. (13), 338.

16 Daston, op.

cit.

(13), 345.





6/16

Francis

Bacon's concept of objectivity 383

subsequent English

natural philosophers

like Robert

Boyle

believed

that

absence of bias

and

scientific impartiality depended

on the avoidance of

theories and

the concentration

upon

and

allegiance

to facts conceived

as sheer

theory-free empirical posits.'7

In this

way,

Daston holds, 'Baconian

facts' became

'the

premierobjects

of

objectivity'

and likewise

served to define

the

relationship

between

objectivity

and

impartiality

in later

seventeenth-

century

science.'8

In my summary of

Daston's essay, I have

not done

justice

to

some

of its

interesting and

suggestive comments. Its

analysis

of

Bacon's

conception

of

objectivity, however,

is

seriously incomplete and also unbalanced

in

the view it

presents

of Bacon's natural

philosophy.

While

it is true that

in

the latter he attached great significanceto the

collection

of facts, he is

mistakenly represented,as a number of scholars including the presentwriter

have shown, when pictured, as he is in Daston's story, as a pure empiricistwho equated

knowledge simply

with facts and left no room

for

theories

in

the

practice

of

science.'9

Moreover, although his emphasis

on

facts as a vital

part

of natural

philosophy may have

been an influential

aspect

of his

legacy

to the

succeeding generation of English natural

philosophers,

his

understanding

of

objectivity,

if

we are

willing

to attribute such a

concept

to

him,

included

a good deal more than this and was

considerably deeper

and more

interesting than Daston's discussion enables us to

realize.

Solomon's

book, which

is

premised

on the

assumption that objectivity has

been

overthrown as a norm of scientific

knowledge, defines it

as

'

self-distancing'

and

'disinterestedness'

or, more explicitly, 'the

holding

in

abeyance, or erasure,

of the

individual mind's desires, interests, assumptions, and intents while that mind is in the

process

of

knowing

the material world

*20

Claiming

to

show how 'class' and

'occupational

positions inflect the

production

of

culture and ideology', it maintains that Bacon's

version

of

objectivity

was an

ideological offspring of the commercial

and mercantilecapitalism of

the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries as the

socio-economic context for the

emergence of

the

strategies

of

self-distancingand objectivecalculation.2'

Unhappily, however, despite its

pretensions, this

work is unable to establish any actual connection between the

character

of Bacon's

philosophy and his supposed class

affiliation.22

Not

only does it fail to

provide

an

adequate

or

detailed examination of the writings that can be related to his

conception

17 Daston,

op. cit. (13), 345-56.

18

Daston,

op. cit. (13), 350,

356. For the importance

assigned to facts in

Bacon's natural

philosophy

and

its

influence upon

seventeenth-century science

in adopting norms

of impartiality and

fidelity to

facts as both a

methodological

necessity and an

essential part of

scientific discourse, see

Barbara

Shapiro, A Culture of

Fact,

Ithaca, 2000.

19 See

Urbach, op. cit.

(12), Chapters 2, 6

and passim;

Perez-Ramos, op. cit (12),

Chapter

18; Zagorin, op.

cit. (8),

Chapter 3.

20

Solomon, op. cit.

(13), pp. xi, xv,

xviii-xix.

21 Solomon,

op. cit. (13), p. xiii.

22

Solomon

is

mistaken in

identifying

Bacon with the

English

commercial bourgeoisie of the sixteenth

century.

Both his father Sir Nicholas Bacon and his uncle William Cecil, LordBurghley, were self-made men who rose to

wealth and high

position

in

the

service

of

the Tudor

monarchy, acquired

titles, country houses and

estates,

and

established themselves

as

members of the

Tudor aristocracy. Their

sons all belongedto

the aristocratic sector of

society. The interest

Bacon took in

commercial policy

and trade was typical of the

statesmen of his

period, who

looked upon

trade as an important

element of national

power.





7/16

384

Perez

Zagorin

of objectivity,

but by equating

his understanding

of the

latter with

'philosophic

self-

distancing'23

t also

overlooks

new and major

aspects of the meaning of objectivity

which

are traceable in his theory of science.24

Bacon's foremost

goal as

a philosopher

was

the attainment

of a new logic

of discovery

in the investigation

of nature

that would greatly

enhance

human

cognitive power

and

assure the continual

progress

of the sciences

and the

growth

of knowledge.

His conception

of objectivity

is entirely

bound

up

with this

end. This

conception

is formulated

most

completely

in his

Novum

Organum

(The

New Organon),

published in

1620

as the second

part

of his Instauratio

Magna (The

Great

Instauration).

Never

finished but designed

to

consist of six

parts, The

Great

Instauration

was Bacon's

title for

the

most ambitious

project

of his intellectual

ife, his

plan for the

reconstruction

and

renewalof philosophy

and

the study of nature.25As a preamble to the exposition of his new logic of discovery based

on a reformed induction,

which occupies

the second

book

of The New

Organon,

he

devoted

the first book

to a critique

of preceding

philosophical

doctrines and

systems and

to

pointing

out the defects

of current

methods

of enquiry

and their

causes. The

entire

discussion

in the first book was

thus

intended

to expose the

various obstacles

that had

hitherto blocked the

progress

of mankind's

knowledge

of nature.

Bacon

regarded

his

prior

critique

as a therapeutic

necessity

which

would help

to

purge

the understanding

of his

readers

so that

it

would

be cleansed

and receptively

prepared

for the discussion

to follow,

a discussion centring

on induction

as a

discovery procedure.26

n his

survey

of the obstacles

to

the

growth

of

knowledge,

the

most

formidable

were those

he called

the idols

of the mind

(idola intellectus). It is in his analysis of these idols, rather than in the importance he

assigned

to the

accurate

compilation

of

facts,

that

we

find the

strongest

evidence

of

his

understanding

of objectivity

and

his most

distinctive

and

significant

contribution

to its

realization

in the

practice

of science.

It is

no doubt true

that as

encapsulated

in

the

familiar

phrase

'the

idols of the

mind',

Bacon

s

account

of

the idols

is

among

the

best-known

parts

of his

philosophy.

As a concept profoundly

relevant to

his view

of

objectivity,

however,

it

has been almost entirely

overlooked.

For this

reason

we are

obliged

to

re-examine

what

he

says

on

this

subject

in order

to see what

it

conveys

about

the

place

of

objectivity

in

his

natural philosophy.

In dealing with this matter, I think it may help

us to

perceive

what

Bacon was

trying

to

do

if

we

pause

for a moment

to notice

the

profound

difference

between

how the

question

of

objectivity

presents

itself

today

and

the

way

it

appeared

in Bacon's time.

Nowadays

objectivity

is a highly

contested

concept

in the

philosophy

and

sociology

of science and

other disciplines

and is

strongly

attacked

by

critics

who

deny

that it is either attainable

or

23 Solomon,

op. cit.

(13), p. xii.

24 See also

the critical

reviews

of Solomon's

book

by Brian

Vickers, Isis (1999),

90, 594-5;

and Robert

K.

Faulkner,

American

Historical

Review (1999),

104, 987-8. Among

its faults,

both

authors

note

its failure

to

analyse or clarify

Bacon's

theories

and its

questionable

arguments

ike

its

explanation

of Baconian

objectivity

as

an ideology and the creed of the rising bourgeoisie.

25

On The Great

Instauration

and its plan and character,

see

Zagorin, op.

cit.

(8),

73-7.

26 Francis

Bacon,

The

New

Organon,

Works, op. cit. (11),

viii,

99,

146-7,

or Book

I,

aphorisms

lxviii,

cxv.

The Latin

original

is

printed

in

ibid., p.

i. In further

references

I

cite

the English

translation

with

occasional

slight

changes.





8/16


objectivity

385

necessary as a norm or

regulative principle

of

enquiry.

Most of these

critics,

whatever their

differences,

tend to share

a common

relativism about

knowledge

and

truth,

which

they

reduce to collective belief, disciplinary

and

community agreement

and conventions

of

language. Taking objectivity

to postulate

an impossible value-free,

neutral

or

aperspectival

position

in

the process

of knowing, they see it as

a

product

of

the illusion that scientific

knowledge is not a

human and social construction

but something simply

discovered and

21

true.

Opposed

to this

view are the numerous

philosophers

who

reject

epistemological

relativism and defend the principle of objectivity

as a

valid

cognitive

standard, guiding

ideal and essential requisiteof scientific and other

enquiry.28For them, objectivity entails

that truth is universal

rather than relative to social position

or cultural membership and,

moreover, that scientists and other investigators

are

sufficiently capable

of

transcending

their personaland cultural background,beliefs and prejudicesto arrive at valid knowledge

and

objective truth.29

The problem confronting

the idea of

objectivity

in

contemporarythought may

thus be

described as chiefly the consequence of some

version of relativism which serves as the

common ground for objectivity's

critics.

In

Bacon's time, however, relativism

in the several

forms it

has assumed

today was not available as a real philosophical option.

The sociology

of knowledge and theory of ideology did not

exist, the status of truth as an ideal and as

the

goal

of

knowledge remained largely unquestioned,

and the possibility

of

impartiality

in moral deliberation,the administration of law

and the writing of history was generally

not denied. Early modern

philosophers knew of course about some

of the relativistic

doctrines of the sophists which are reported in the dialogues of Plato, but these seem to

have

exerted little

influence.

In

his theory

of

science,

Bacon himself disagreed with the

dictum

of the

celebrated sophist Protagoras,

which Plato quoted

in

his Theaetetus, that

'man

is the measure of all

things', because

he held that

men need to

accommodate

their

thoughts

to

the measure of the universe rather

than

to

their

own

predilections.30

The

nearest resemblance to modern relativism

in Bacon's world was the philosophy of ancient

Academic and especially Pyrrhonian scepticism,

revived

in

the sixteenth

century, which

produced arguments

doubting

the

possibility

of certain

knowledge

and

truth. Scepticism of

27 The essays contained in RethinkingObjectivity (Megill, op. cit. (2)) provide a good sample of contemporary

criticisms of objectivity in science and other

disciplines;

see

among

others Kenneth

Gergen, 'The

mechanical self

and the rhetoric of

objectivity';

Lorraine

Code,

'Who cares?

The

poverty

of

objectivism

for moral

epistemology';

and Evelyn Fox Keller, 'The paradox of scientific

subjectivity'.

28 Among the philosophic opponents of epistemological relativism and defenders of

objectivity

are

Karl

Popper, 'The rationality of scientific

revolutions'

and

'The myth of the framework', in idem, The

Myth of The

Framework, London, 1994; Israel

Scheffler, Science and Subjectivity, 2nd edn., Indianapolis, 1982; Thomas

Nagel, The View from Nowhere, New York, 1986; idem,

The

Last Word, New York, 1997; Nicholas

Rescher,

Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal

Reason,

Notre

Dame, IN, 1997; Larry Laudan, Science and

Relativism, Chicago, 1990; Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science, New York, 1993;

Susan Haack,

Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, Chicago,

1998.

29 This last

statement must

be

qualified

n

the

case of

Popper's anti-relativism,

since he

always

maintained

that

it is impossible to know if a theory is true and that the measure of a scientific theory is not its truth but its ability

to

resist falsification.

30

Plato, Theaetetus,

160d;

Although

Bacon nowhere

mentions Protagoras,one

of

the essential themes of

his

natural philosophy, often stated in The New

Organon, is that

men must

adjust their thoughts to the measure of

the universe.





9/16

386

Perez Zagorin

several types was an

important trend in early

modern philosophy

and its representatives

included such noted thinkers

as Montaigne, Charron,

Gassendi, Pascal and

Bayle, as

well

as many

lesser figures.31In Bacon's

case, though,

albeit he was a great doubter

and

questioner

of

particular

knowledge

claims, he neverattached

much weight to the challenge

of the sceptical philosophy

and always maintained

that knowledge

could be firmly

established and continually

enlarged. If he

had happened

to be acquainted

with

Montaigne's

sceptical

comment that what is true

on one side of the mountain

is false on

the

other,

he gave no indication

that he took this view

seriously.32

When discussing

scepticism, he mentioned

in particular he doctrine

of

akatalepsz'a,he inabilityof the

mind

to know anything, which

he explained had been

made into a dogma by the

later disciples

of Plato in the New Academy.33

He charged the sceptics

with making

'a cult of the

incomprehensibility of nature' and promoting 'a deliberate and artificial despair'

concerning the acquisition

of knowledge. What

later came to be termed epistemology,

the

branch of philosophy concerned

with whether and how

knowledge is possible, was not

for

him a

genuine

problem, and

he was not troubled by

the

deceptions

of the

senses

and

other

arguments sceptics

advanced as

reasons

against

the

attainability

of truth. He

was

convinced that all

the

impediments

to knowledge, including

those

due to the weakness

of

the senses, could

be overcome by the

intellect when supplied

with the

proper

helps

and

a

method

for

dealing

with the subtleties

of nature.34

What all

of this means is that

in his reflections

on what we now call

objectivity

Bacon

did not need

to

worry

about

providing

an answer

to relativism.

Instead he was

entirely

preoccupied

with the specific problems

he perceived

as hindrances to the advancementof

knowledge and

the implementation of objectivity

in

the sciences.

This is the principal

context

in

which his discussion

of the idols

of the mind should be read.

He

had previously

touched upon

the idols

in several

of his

earliest writings

and also given

them some attention

in The Advancement

of Learning,

published

in

1605,

his most

important philosophical

treatise

prior

to

The New

Organon.

In a comment

in the former work

on the

deficiency

of human

judgement,

he used

a

striking optical metaphor

to observe

that 'the

mind of man

is far

from the nature

of a clear and

equal glass,

wherein the beams

of

things

should

reflect

according

to their true

incidence; nay,

it is rather

like an enchanted

glass,

full

of

31

See the survey

by Charles Larmore,

'Scepticism', and the literature

there

cited,

in The

Cambridge

History

of Seventeenth-CenturyPhilosophy

(ed.

Daniel

Garberand Michael

Ayers),

2

vols., Cambridge,

1998, ii,

Chapter

32, and

Stephen Gaukroger's

discussion of

ancient and

sixteenth-century

scepticism and relativism

in Descartes:

An Inellectual

Biography,Oxford,

1995, 311-16.

32

Bacon had read

some of

Montaigne's Essais.

The observation mentioned

in the text comes

from

his

Apologie de Raimond

Sebond, Essais,

Book II, 12, a classic argument

and collection

of examples intended

to prove

that

the human

mind can know nothing with

certainty.

33

Bacon, op. cit. (26),

viii, 98, or Book

I, aphorism lxvii. See

also the

notes on akataleps:'a

n Thomas Fowler's

edition

of Novum Organum,

2nd edn., Oxford, 1889, 210-12,

254-5.

34 See Francis Bacon,

The Refutation of

Philosophies (Redargutio

Philosophiarum),

printed

in Benjamin

Farrington, The Philosophy of FrancisBacon, Liverpool, 1964, 127; Francis Bacon, Thoughts and Conclusions

(Cogitata

et Visa),

printedin ibid.,

88-9; The Great Instauration,

Plan

of the work',

Works,viii, 43-4;

the Latin

original

is printed

in

ibid.,

i. The

New

Organon

includes

a critical reference

to the Greek sceptic Pyrrho

and his

followers and

a number of

criticisms

of

scepticism; ibid., viii,

75-6, 98, 158,

or Book I, aphorisms xxxvii,

lxvii,

cxxvi.





10/16

Francis

Bacon's

concept of

objectivity 387

superstition and

imposture,

if

it be not

delivered and

reduced'.3

In

another

equally

compelling

image

from

the

preface

to The

Great

Instauration,

he

declared that 'the

universe

to

the

eye

of

the human

understanding is framed

like

a

labyrinth,

presenting

as

it does

on every side

so many

ambiguities of

way, such deceitful

resemblances of

objects

and

signs, natures so

irregular

n

their

lines,

and

so knotted and

entangled.36

One of his

greatest hopes,

accordingly,

was to rescue

the mind from its

superstitions and

impostures

so

that it

could

explore and

conquer nature's

labyrinth.His

introduction

of

the

idols was

related

to this purpose.

A

word

anglicized

from

the

Greek ei'dolon and the

Latin

idolum,

the idols

Bacon

scrutinized did

not refer

to false gods

that are

worshipped,

but to

phantoms, false

appearances,

fictions,

delusive images,

illusions,

prejudices, fallacies and

false notions.

In

their impact on thought, some of the idols were the result of external influences, while

others

sprang from certain

innate

propensities of the

human mind. Their

importance

lay

in the

fact that

their effect

extended far

beyond particular

mistakes to the entire

warping

and misdirectionof

the

intelligence.

By identifying them and

their

operation,

Bacon

sought

to

uncover the

deep-seated and often

unconscious

sources of

misconception,

irrationality

and

error that barred the

way

to

a true

understandingof

nature. He found

a

comparison

to them in

Aristotle's

De

Sophisticis Elenchis or

Sophistical

Refutations,

noting that

'the

doctrine

of the

idols

is

to the

interpretation

of

nature what the

doctrine of

the

refutation

of

sophisms

is to

common

logic'.3

While Aristotle's

treatise,

however, was

concerned with

the

description of

logical fallacies

or

sophisms, Bacon's

examination of

the idols

ranged

more widely in order to identify the mental, psychological and socially

engendered

dispositions

and

beliefs

that were

responsible for

systematic

distortion and error.

Bacon divided

the idols

of the mind

into four

categories. The

first,

the

idols of the

tribe

('idola

tribus'),

were rooted in

human

nature and hence

common

to mankind.

These were

the

errors

to which

human

beings

were innately

prone, and

caused men to

look on

the

universe

as

if

it

were formed

according

to

their own

measure and

by analogy to themselves.

Among

the

consequences Bacon

attributed to

the idols of

the tribe

were the

mind's

assumption

of

greater order and

regularity

in

the world

than

is

actually the

case; its

perception

of

fictitious

analogies

and

parallelsfor

phenomena

in

nature;

its

tendency, after

adopting an opinion, to maintain it with the aid of continual rationalizations despite the

existence of

countervailing

evidence, a practice

to which

was due all

the

superstition in

astrology,

dreams,

omens

and

impressionsof

divine

judgments; its attraction

to positive

rather than

negative

instances, even

though the

latter are

the stronger

force in the

establishment of

true

axioms;

and its

disposition to

fall back

on final

causes as

explanations,

a

practice that defiled

philosophy and

accorded

more with

human nature

35 Francis

Bacon, The

Advancement of

Learning,

Works, vi, 276.

The word

'reduced' in this

context means

'corrected'

and is

related to

the Latin term

'reductio'

in

Bacon's preface to

Novum

Organum, ibid., i,

234, on

which

see also the

editor's note,

ibid.

36

Francis

Bacon, The Great

Instauration,

Works, viii, 32. In

the plan of The

Great

Instauration,

after

stressing

the necessity of 'keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature' so as to receive their images 'simply as

they are', he made the

comment,

'For

God forbid

that we should

give out a

dream of our

own

imagination for

a

pattern of

the

world'; ibid.,

'Plan of the

work', 53.

37

Bacon,

op. cit. (26),

76, or

Book I,

aphorism xl. Bacon

also speaks of

Aristotle's

Sophistical

Refutations in

connection

with the idols

of the mind

in The

Advancement of

Learning,ibid., vi,

274-5.





11/16

388 Perez Zagorin

than with the nature

of the universe. All these errors, Bacon believed, were traceable to the

inveterate anthropocentrism

with which human beings projected

onto nature and the

world the patterns of their own instinctual

thinking. His analysis went further still,

however,

in

observing that the human

understanding, far from being a 'dry light', was

strongly affected by

the will and passions. Hence there come into

being what he termed

'wishful sciences'

('ad quod vult scientias'), because 'what man

wishes were true he more

readily believes' ('quod

enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius

credit').38

Yet another

effect of these same idols was the intellect's

inclination to reify abstractions by attributing

substance and reality to things

in

flux. But

of the

many aberrations

they produced,

the

greatest of all, he

considered, were the incompetence and deceptions

of the senses, which

were weak and erring

when

left

to

themselves.

Owing to their weakness, many things

in

nature remained unobserved; in this connection Bacon maintained that a truer

interpretation of

nature could be achieved by appropriate experiments,

since

in

these the

senses judged only the experiment

while it was the latter that decided the point of

nature

in

respect

to

things

themselves.39

The

second category

of

the idols, those of

the

cave ('idola

specus'), were errors

due

to

the

peculiarities

and variety of impressions

of each

particular

individual, every

one of

whom dwelt

in his

own

cave,

which refractedand distorted

the

light

of

nature.

Under their

influence,

men became attached to

particular

sciences

and

speculations

in

obedience

to

their

fancies.

Thus Aristotle

enslaved the

study

of nature

to the

syllogism

and the

alchemists based

their

philosophy

on a few

experiments.

Some

minds

noticed

differences,

others looked for analogies; some venerated antiquity, others loved novelty - attitudes

equally injurious

to

science.

As an antidote to the idols

of the

cave,

Bacon

proposed

that

students

of

nature

follow the rule that whenever

their minds seized

upon something

with

special satisfaction, they

should

consider it

suspect

and take

special

care

to

keep

their

minds balanced

and clear.40

The most troublesome of the idols,

according to Bacon,

were

the ones in the third

category,

the idols of the

marketplace ('idola fori'),

which

stemmed from the

deceits

of

language. Although people supposed

that reason

governs words,

the

opposite

was also

true,

that

words

govern

reason

and

give

rise

to

innumerable

empty

controversies and

fictions. As a result learnedmen have disputed merelyabout words and names, an evil that

not even definitions could

cure,

since

they

themselves were words and

begat

more words.

These idols also

misled

the

understanding

in

two

ways: they gave confused,

ill-defined

names to

things

that

exist,

and

they gave

names

to unreal

things

like

Fortune,

Prime

Mover,

Orbits of

the

Planets

('PlanetarumOrbes'),41

Element of

Fire and

other fictions that

owed

their

origin

to

false

and

idle theories

('quae

a

vanis

et

falsis

theoriis

ortum

habent').

In

38 Bacon, op.

cit.

(26),

82,

or Book

I, aphorism

xlix.

39 Bacon, op.

cit. (26), 79-83, or Book

I, aphorisms

xlv-li.

40 Bacon, op. cit. (26), 77,

84-6, or Book I, aphorisms

xlii,

liii-lviii.

41

I

am not sure

whether the

reference o 'Orbits'

in the English translation

of this phrase is correct,

although

it also appearsin the translation in Spedding'sedition, viii, 87, or Book I, aphorism lx. It has been suggestedto

me that by

Orbes Bacon may have meant

the fictitious spheres

on which the

planets were thought

to revolve; or

possibly the word

signified 'circles', one

of its possible meanings,

since he regardedas

false the

belief that celestial

bodies move

in

perfect

circles;

ibid.

79,

or Book I, aphorism

xlv. When speaking of circles

in

Novum

Organum,

however,

he used the word circulus.





12/16

Francis Bacon's

concept of

objectivity 389

Bacon's

opinion it

was much easier to

expel

the

second

of these errors

by

getting

rid of

bad

theories than to

eliminate the

first,

which was

deeplyrooted,

complicated

and

due to

faulty,

incompetent abstraction.42

Finally, in

the

fourth category

were

the

idols

of

the theatre

('idola

theatri'),

consisting

of the

different

dogmas that

migrated

into human minds

from

false

systems

of

philosophy,

false

demonstrations

n

logic and false

principles

and

axioms

in the

sciences

and

which

gave

rise, like

stage plays, to

fictions and unreal

worlds. Bacon devoted

his

lengthiest

strictures

to

this class

of idols,

criticizing

various philosophies for their

deficiencies

and

errors.

The

Rationalist

school, for

example,

applied meditation and

ingenuity

of

wit to a

small amount

of

uncritically accepted

experience. The

Empirical

school,

to

which the

alchemists

belonged,

constructed

vain and incredible

systemsout

of

a

few

experiments,

wresting

facts

to make them conform with its conclusions. The Superstitious school, which included

Pythagorasand

Plato, mixed

theology with

philosophy to the

detriment of

each.

Aristotle,

whom Bacon

placed with the

Sophistical

school,

corrupted

natural

philosophy

with

his

logic, fashioning the

world out of

categories, and

although

he made some

experiments,

actually reached

his

conclusions beforehand and

failed to consult

experience.

Bacon

cautioned

against the

intemperance with which

philosophical systems either

give

or

withhold

their assent:

those too

ready

in

deciding

caused the

sciences

to

be

dogmatic

and

magisterial,

while the others,

who denied the

possibility of

knowledge, pursued

enquiries

that

led to nothing. He

indicted

'vicious

demonstrations'

('pravae

demonstrationes')

in

logic,43 whose effectwas to

make heworld

the slaveof

thoughtand thought

he

slaveof

words. He found fault with these

demonstrations for various

reasons: their use of

faulty

sense

impressions and of

notions ill drawn

from the

senses; their

reliance on a bad kind

of

induction that

infers the

principles of the

sciences by simple

enumeration; and their

mode of

discovery

and proof by

first establishing

the most general

principles and

then

derivingintermediate

axioms,

a

procedure he denounced

as 'the

parent

of all error

and the

curse

of all

science'. '

In

opposition to

these practices, he

maintained that the

best

demonstration was

experience provided it

did not go

beyond the

experiment, because

unless a

transfer to other

cases deemed

similar was

done in a correct

and orderly

way,

the

result would be

fallacious.

And he felt

forced to state that

the method

currently

used in

making experiments was blind and stupid.45

Bacon was

convinced that the

idols in all four

categories had to

be

renounced and

eliminated as far as

possible in

order to free the

human

understanding.46To be

sure, in

reviewing

them, he based

many of his

criticisms on his

own

natural or

experimental

philosophy

with

its belief in a

reformed

induction, which he

took as a

standard.

Moreover,

his

disparaging

and

destructivecomments

on the

doctrines

of

Plato and

Aristotle, and

other

philosophers

whose

influence he

wished

to

overthrow,

were

heavily biased

by his own

42

Bacon, op.

cit. (26), 78,

86-9, or

Book I,

aphorisms xlii,

lix-lx.

43

Bacon, op.

cit. (42), 99,

or Book I,

aphorismlxix.

44

Bacon,

op. cit. (42),

100, or

Book I,

aphorism lxix.

45 Bacon, op. cit. (42), 78, 90-100, or Book I, aphorisms xliv, lxii-lxx.

46

Bacon,

op.

cit.

(42),

99,

or

Book

I,

aphorism lxviii. In the

plan

of The Great

Instauration

he

expressed

the

view

that the first

two classes

of idols

were hard to

eradicate

and the other two

classes could

not

be

eradicated

at all. The

most that

could be done

with the latter,

he

said, was to

point them

out so that

their

insidious effect

on the mind

could be

identifiedand

overcome; ibid., 45.





13/16

390 Perez Zagorin

polemical purpose and failed

to do them justice. In the

main, nevertheless, his overriding

aim was to reveal the aberrations

and failures of intelligence wrought by the idols'

sway.

What he attacked

in

the idols' effect upon the

mind were animism, anthropocentrismand

anthropomorphism, unreal abstract entities and human

wish projections and delusions

that saw in the universe

the reflection of their own image and desires. He endeavoured

to

teach the mind

to

be

aware

of its own naive and spontaneous operations, to

help it to

overcome its prejudiced,

self-centred assumptions and beliefs, and to enable it to

gain an

objective rationality and standpoint as an essential

prerequisite for the advancement of

knowledge of nature.

If we

attempt to define

the conception of objectivityunderlying and implicit

in Bacon's

analysis of the idols, we should have to say that it

means a mental attitude and type of

enquiry that leads to true knowledge and understandingof the world and the phenomena

of nature

and their causes.

It does not seem to carry with it any implication

of

disinterestedness, cognitive self-distancing or the suppression

of subjectivity or the self.47

As he conceived

of

it,

the consciousness and identification

of the idols, along with the

attempt

to banish their

influence,

was

equivalent

to a

reorientation,

redirection and

widening of the mind, the achievement

of a

new

clarity

and a rectified

perspective

in the

interests of scientific understanding

and its productiveresults. For Bacon this reorientation

was not incompatible

with

such strong cognitive

emotions as passion and

ambition

in

enquiry, pleasure

and

gratification

in

contributing to

the increase of knowledge, and

happiness in scientificdiscovery.48

Bacon is famed for his conviction that knowledge

brings

power and his insistence that the production of works of all kinds for the relief of the

human condition is the

proper end of knowledge. Nevertheless, he was always consistent

in

regarding ruth as the highest goal of scientific enquiry

from which works would

be sure

to

follow.

In

his naturalphilosophy

he

often compared

truth

to

light

and

placed

it

above

any

other

earthly good.49

The

thoughts

and

feelings

which

he

associated

with

the

quest

for

truth as

a

supreme

human

value

are

eloquently

stated

in his

essay

on truth: 'the

inquiry

of

truth,

which is

the

love-making and wooing

of

it,

the

knowledge

of

truth,

which

is

the

presence of it, and the belief of truth, which

is the

enjoying

of

it,

is

the

sovereign

good

of

human

nature'.50

47 One recent scholar's reading of Bacon's philosophy is that 'the inductive methodis a machine that displaces

the faculty

of choice' and,

in reference o the idols, that

'to advance in learning s to mortify the minds of inquirers

so that they see and perform

the works of truth'; see

John C. Briggs,

Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric

of Nature,

Cambridge,

MA., 1989, 9, 15. I have

not succeeded in finding any

warrant for these characterizations

n what

Bacon wrote. Nowhere in

his discussionof the idols does

he suggest that the mortification

of the mind is necessary

to eliminate or reduce their

influence. In the preface to

The New

Organon he refers to machinery

when, after

insisting

on the need for a fresh start

in the work of understanding,

he comments that the mind

must be guided

at

every

step and 'the

business done as if by machinery'

('ac res veluti per machinas

conficiatur'). As its context

immediately makes clear,

however, this statement does

not imply a

mechanical or machine-likeconception

of the

mind or the denial of its

faculty of choice. Thus he goes

on to say that

just as the mechanical arts

have not relied

for their achievements only on the naked

hands but sought the help

of instruments,

so in intellectualmatters

the

mind cannot rely solely

on the naked

forces of the understanding

but needs instruments and

machinery

to

accomplishgreat works. His essential point is that induction is such an instrument; Bacon, op. cit. (26), 61-2,

preface.

48

See

Scheffler,op.

cit.

(28), Appendix B,

'In

praise

of the

cognitive

emotions'.

49

See Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 88-9.

50

Bacon,

'Of

truth',

Essays, Works, xii,

82.





14/16


objectivity 391

The

misapprehension

that

objectivity

for Bacon centred

on the

supremacy

he

assigned

to facts is

closely

connected with the mistaken

image

we continue to

have

of him

as a

pure

empiricist

who wished to divorce science from

theories,

hypotheses

and

interpretations.

Natural history, which he

designated

as

part

three of The Great

Instauration, occupied

a

vital

place

in

his

philosophy

of science because the facts it

supplied

on

various

topics

were

to

provide

the data

upon

which induction

would

operate.

In

the

instructions,

however,

that

he drew up for the

writing

of

natural

histories,

he did not

envisage

them

as

indiscriminate

accumulations of facts.

They

were intended in

principle

to consist of

critically

sifted

information on

particular subjects whose collection would be

steadily directed

by

the

investigator's questions, enriched

by experiments and controlled

by

the

aim of

facilitating

induction. Their

chief purpose, moreover,

was

to

aid

in

the formation of

axioms.51Bacon

condemned the syllogistic demonstration of Aristotelian naturalphilosophy for leaping at

once 'from particulars to

remote axioms' of the

highest

generality,

including

first

principles,

and then

erroneously treating

these

principles

as

unshakeable truths

which it

used to

prove middle-range

axioms;

whereas the correct

procedure,

he

argued, would be

to ascend

successively

from

particulars

to lesser

axioms to

intermediate axioms and

finally

to the most

general.52

He also decried

'anticipations

of nature'

('anticipationes naturae'),

by

which

phrase

he did

not mean

hypotheses,

as has

been

supposed,

but

the practice of rash

and

premature

generalizations

based on a

few familiar instances.53In

Bacon's

scheme,

axioms as a

higher

and more

generalized

level of

knowledge

that leads to an

operative

science,

not

facts,

are

the

principal

fruit and main

achievement he

expected from his

method.54He was also quite explicit that the axioms established

by induction must

cover

more

than the

particulars rom which

they were

derived; they

should be

'wider and

larger'

and

capable

of

indicating

'new

particulars'

that would serve

to confirm

them.55Axioms

thus functioned

in

Bacon's

philosophy

as

theories and

hypotheses to lead to the

discovery

of

new

facts, suggest further

experiments and generate

new axioms. His

recognition of the

continual

interaction

between

experiment and

theory

is well

conveyed

in

the following

declaration in

The New

Organon:

'my

method

['via et

ratio'], as

I

have often

clearly

stated ... is

this,

not

to extract works

from works or

experiments

from

experiments

(like

the

empirics), but from works

and experiments

to extract causes

and axioms, and again

51

Francis Bacon, A

Preparative toward

a

Natural and

Experimental History

(Parasceve ad

Historiam

Naturalem et

Experimentalem),

Works, viii;

the Latin original

is

in

ibid., ii. Bacon

included this

treatise

in

the

same volume

as The New

Organon; see also the discussion

of Baconian

natural

history

in

Zagorin, op.

cit.

(8),

103-6.

52


137-8, or Book I,

aphorism civ.

53 Bacon, op. cit.

(26),

73-4, or Book I,

aphorisms xxvi-xxx.

Karl Popper

erroneously supposed that the

anticipations

of

nature' Bacon

criticized were the

same as

hypotheses; see his The

Logic of

Discovery, London,

1975, 279

n., and

Conjectures and

Refutations, New York,

1962, 255.

54 I have

shown elsewhere

that Bacon refrained from

using

the word

'methodus' or

'method' to

describe his

logic of discovery

based

upon induction and

the reasons why he

did so; see

Zagorin, op. cit. (8),

51-7. As

pointed

out in ibid. and likewise noted below, instead of methodus, he preferredsuch phrases as via et ratio for his

discovery

procedure. It is convenient,

however, and need not

lead to

misunderstanding, o follow

the

terminology

of the

English translation in

Spedding's edition

of Bacon's

Works, and refer to Baconian

induction

as

his

method;

see,

e.g.,

Bacon, op. cit.

(26), 61, 63

(preface), 74, 159, or Book

I,

aphorisms xxxiii, cxxvii.

55


139, or Book I,

aphorism cvi.





15/16

392

Perez Zagorin

from those

causes and axioms

new works and experiments, as

a legitimate interpreterof

nature

.56

Finally,

in

this connection, it is worth

noticing the presence of the word

'interpreter'

('interpretes') in

the above passage and the

prominence in

Bacon's philosophy of what he

called 'interpretation'

('interpretatio'). Interpres

n

classical

Latin signified an

explainer,

a

translator,

an

interpreter,and

interpretatioreferred o an

explanation or interpretation.

The

derivations of both words

were also part of the

English language in

Bacon's time.

Deeply conscious of

nature's subtlety and its

many unobserved and

unobservable

operations, Bacon did

not

think the

understanding of nature, or

what we would call

scientific explanation and the

discovery of laws of

nature, consisted

in

the

establishment

and

registration

of

particular

facts. He

always

conceived of such

explanation

as a work of

interpretation n which the facts contributed by natural historywere certainly essential but

also

ancillary.

The New

Organon

is subtitled

Aphorisms

Concerning

the

Interpretationof

Nature and the

Kingdom of Man, ('Aphorismi

de

Interpretatione

Naturae et

Regno

Hominis'),57

and its

very first sentence depicts 'man' as 'the

servant and

interpreter

of

nature'

('Homo,

naturae minister et

interpres').

Other

writings contain

the

phrase

'the

interpretation

of

nature'

in

their

titles,58

and the word

'interpretatio'

occurs

quite

frequently

n

his reflectionson

science. By 'interpretation' he

usually

referred

o his method

of

induction as the

basis

for

explaining the

workings

of nature.

'That reason which is

elicited from

things by

a

just

and methodical

process',

he

said,

'I am

accustomed to

call

the

Interpretation

of

Nature', ('illam rationem

quae

debitis modis

elicitur

a

rebus

InterpretationemNaturae ... vocare

consuevimus'),

and he described 'true and

legitimate

induction as the

very key

of

interpretation' ('Inductio legitima

et

vera, quae ipsa

clavis

est

interpretationis').59

Hence in Book II of The

New

Organon,

when

he

comes to

expound

his 'directions for the

interpretation

of

nature',

he

says they

embrace 'two

generic

divisions;

the one how to educe and

form

axioms from

experience;

the other how to

deduce and derive new

experiments

from

axioms'.

60

Statements like these

appear

to leave

no doubt

that

in

Bacon's natural

philosophy,

interpretation

as a reliance on a

properly

designed

induction for the attainment of axioms

necessarily

included

theories and was

conceived

of

as

a

theoretical

enterprise.

Bacon's analysisof the idols of the mind seems to have little if any precedent n the work

of

previous

thinkers

and

is one of his

most

significant

contributions to the

philosophy

of

science, although

its

originality

has not

always

been

recognized

or

understood.61Michael

56

Bacon, op.

cit.

(26), 148,

or Book

I, aphorism

cxvii.

57 For the significance of Bacon's idea of the kingdom of man, see Zagorin, op. cit. (8),

77-9.

58 See, for example, Bacon, Valerius Terminusof the Interpretationof Nature, Works, vi, a work

written

in

English; De InterpretationeNaturae Proemium (Proemiumon the Interpretationof Nature), ibid., vii; Cogitata

et Visa; de InterpretationeNaturae, sive de Scientia Operativa (Thoughts and Conclusions on The

Interpretation

of

Nature or An

Operative Science),

in

ibid.

59

Bacon, op. cit. (26), 73, 179, or Book I, aphorism xxvi; Book. II, aphorism x; see also the

preface to this

work, ibid., 64, in which Bacon statedthat he has chosen to call his method or way the 'Interpretationof nature'.

60 Bacon, op. cit. (26), 178, or Book II, aphorism x.

61

In

his preface to Novum Organum, Bacon's learned editor, Robert L. Ellis, examined the

possibility

that

Bacon had borrowed

his

classification of the idols from his thirteenth-centurynamesake Roger Bacon, whose

Opus

Maius included an

account of four offendicula or causes

of error

mpeding

the

road to

knowledge.

Ellis saw

little similarity

between

FrancisBacon's discussion of the idols and

the work

by Roger Bacon, and also noted that





16/16

Francis Bacon's concept of objectivity

393

Ayers, writing on the

theory

of

knowledge

in the

recent CambridgeHistory of Seventeenth-

Century Philosophy, goes far astray

in

commenting

on the idols

that

'Bacon's list of

intellectual

vices

appears

as a

polemic

aimed at

philosophical

and

religious

enemies rather

than as a general

natural history of human unreasonablenessand cognitive failure'.

2

The

identification and

explanation of some of the main causes of human unreasonableness

and

cognitive failure is exactly what Bacon's discussion of the idols is

all

about. No other

philosopher of the

seventeenth century tried to explore the sources of error in science

with

more care, or

showed greater awareness and understandingof what we can

retrospectively

recognize as the

problem of objectivity, or tried harder to devise constructive

suggestions

for

the achievement of objectivity in the conduct of

enquiry.

the former

could not have known

OpusMaius,

which was not printed

until the

nineteenth century. His

conclusion

was that Bacon's

conception

of the idols

was

'altogether

his

own';

Bacon, op.

cit.

(11),

i,

158-9.

Fowler,

who

also

considers this subject in his edition

of Novum

Organum, 212-13,

is in

accord with Ellis and

observes that

the

resemblance between

the offendicula and

the idols is

very slight.

62 Michael Ayers, 'Theories of knowledge and belief', The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century

Philosophy

(ed. Daniel

Garber and Michael

Ayers), 2 vols.,

Cambridge, 1998, ii, 1044.

Another

misunderstanding

is

John C. Briggs's

confusion of the idols

with

idolatry and his claim

that Bacon's

discussion of the idols

regarded

opposition

to the new sciences

as 'idolatrous

heresies' which

must be 'smashed'.

'Bacon's science

and religion',

The

Cambridge Companion to Bacon

(ed. Markku

Peltonen), Cambridge,

1996, 177-8.

Documents

Idols of the Mind