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IOT
After listening each week for almost a year to this elegantly prepared and presented programme, I want to share this quotation from WH Auden's 'The Age of Anxiety'. This is because I have become growingly frustrated by how deeply entrenched things seem to be and how intricately enmeshed the human mind becomes with its creations and 'collusions'. Auden assembled these words into a point at which eloquence transforms into profound truth and they embody so accurately what appears to me, in our present age, to be a 'stultifying hurdle': 'We would rather be ruined than changed; We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.'. Brilliant writing. Really enjoyed Melvyn's newsletter..... 'Knowledge is power' is pretty obvious even to (especially to!) a three year old. It's how each generation acts on this universal truism that's surely the important bit. Many, many thanks.
Ben Thomas - Baconian Science
As usual, a great programme. One of the best things about IOT is Melvyn's persona: he doesn't generally let the academic "experts" fudge and waffle as they sometimes like to, and tries to nail down their meaning in clear terms. Not all contributors are very good at this, so -- as Robin Jackman says earlier in this thread -- Rhodri Lewis's elegant corrections to some of the received ideas about Bacon were particularly welcome. With this in mind, I have to say that I'm puzzled by Melvyn's newsletter, in which he takes issue with Lewis's statement that Bacon never said "knowledge is power" in those words, but that he probably agreed with the sentiment. Melvyn makes it sound like Lewis is being a fudger, but he was simply being accurate on an important point. I can't read Latin, but I've now looked up translations of the phrase in question (in the essay "On Heresy" in the 1597 Religious Meditations), and when looked at in context it clearly refers to knowledge as being one of the powers of God's mind. COMPLETELY different to "knowledge is power" as used by Polar explorers, Foucault and whoever. It's great that Melvyn continues to try to "nail down" the contributors' wafflings and make them talk to us in a language we can understand. Still, and although everyone is entitled to a bad day (even Melvyn nods!), he's made himself look lazy and willfully argumentative in this case. I'm looking forward to a speedy return to form next week...
Will -- Bacon
I was astonished by the pedantry of Rhodri Lewis in claiming that Bacon never said "knowledge is power". When pressed, he conceded that Bacon said many things like it and would have agreed with the sentiment. He mentioned the Meditations of 1597 then passed on. In those Meditationes Sacrae, Bacon uses the phrase, "scientia potentia est". This is typically translated, or perhaps better paraphrased as, "knowledge is power", though literally it means, "knowledge (itself) is power". The distinction is not worth the mention and managed only to distract the discussion pointlessly.
Bryn Jones
I missed your programme but I hope that you mentioned that Bacon invented binary (after the Chinese and Indians centuries earlier). He encoded alphabetic characters in binary (as our computers do), for encryption purposes.
Judith Rowely Bacon with the rind on
Great meandering letter this week..really got a flavour of the man (or perhaps the gathering?) coming through. Keep piling it on, thanks for the drollery,
Patrick Mulvey Bacon and Induction
Another good programme, but Bacon did not "invent" induction see: Aristotle, Prior Analytics, ed. McKeon 1941, New York: Randomhouse, p. 102. Actually nobody did, induction as an aspect of logic, eternally preexisted mankind.
Dr Michael Eldred - Baconian Science 02/04/09
As usual a fine program with knowledgeable guests, but this time marred by the repeated, silly assertion that Baconian empiricism “overthrew Aristotle”. If anything was overthrown, it was medieval scholasticism’s appropriation of Aristotle, a strain of Aristoteleanism. Without Aristotle, Britain would never have had its Newton, nor its Maxwell. Why? Because there would be no modern physics at all without that concept at the vital, throbbing heart of Aristotle’s thinking named by a neologism he coined himself: energeia (literally: at-work-ness). Today in our scientific arrogance we think we know what energy is, but in truth we have only managed to obfuscate the phenomenon by stripping it down to the status of a variable in an equation of motion.
James B -- Baconianism
Be fair, R.J. Holmes ... not all of the panellists were into the Bacon as torturer of nature thing, and Pumfrey _was_ corrected ... though it would have been better Lewis had been allowed to make more of his counter-claim that Bacon said no such thing. As for nature and experiement, what about the myth of Proteus? A slighly longer and more complicated allegory of masculine nature being wrestled with by the scientist to give up its truth. isn't this (for Anon) also what's going with the airpump? Making nature do what is doesn't do naturally? As for symbolism, I reckon that the pyramid is a metaphor for the hidden hermetic learning of the Rosy-cross or holy grail or King Lear or whatever.
Mark Hessey Baconian Method and Homeopathy
Thank you for an excellent discussion this week. Samuel Hahnemann in the 1790's rigorously applied Bacon's method of inquiry into the nature of health and disease and first published his "Organon of the Rational Art of Healing in 1810. It was by his close observation of the effects of Cinchona (Peruvian Bark) on his own health that he was able, through observation and induction,to say " Peruvian Bark, which is used as a remedy for intermittent fever acts because it can produce symptoms similar to those of intermittent fever in healthy people." (S.Hahnemann,Lesser Writings ) This principle, after further experimentation, became known as "Similia Similibus Curentur " - The Law Of Similars, and The Rational Healing Art he came to name from the greek "Homoios-pathos", Homeopathy meaning similar suffering.Im my opinion , the early C19th development of Homeopathy as a rational science of medcine is the most successful long standing example of the application of Francis Bacon's scientific method of the meticulous observation of nature - the study of the patient; the collection of facts; the writing down of symptoms in great detail; the analysis of those facts; the categorising of symptoms into generals, and particulars, the comparison of those symptoms with the facts of the materia medica using an index known as the Repertory ; and the subsequent induction; the prescription.So when a homeopath sits down to observe and investigate a patient and their symptoms , he or she is using Baconian methods of induction.Hahnemann used Bacon's methods to investigate the curative action of plants and then minerals in what he termed the provings - long lists of symptoms observed in patients taking these in increasingly smaller doses. By the study of the collective expression of disease in humanity in contemporary times and in history he derived his broader theory of disease known as The theory of Miasms. He asked of his colleagues that they become unprejudiced observers. He reserves his greatest invective for those physicians of his day who construct "empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essential nature" of the body based as they are on "mere theoretical webs" Surely this is the language of Bacon. As Hahneman himself said "by observation, reflection and experience, I discovered... that.. to cure mildly, rapidly, certainly and permanently choose, in every case of disease, a medicine which can itself produce an affection similar to that sought to be cured. "I ask Pumfrey to reconsider there view and to look at Homoeopathy as a lasting and successful example of Inductive logical reasoning , of Baconian method.I reccomend The Organon of Medicine sixth edition By S.Hahnemann as a powerful defence of Bacon's Methodology in the field of Medicine.
Baconian science
ps - bear in mind that our genes are now being 'monopolized'.....
Baconian Science
Well they got the red herrings out the way: that as the Lord Chancellor he took bribes(apparently it was the custom),that he was the alternative as the author of Shakespeare(rubbish). We found out the whole basis of his philosophy was practical: to give mankind mastery over the forces of nature by means of scientificdiscoveries and inventions. He held that philosophy should be kept separatefrom theology, not intimately blended with it as in scholasticism. Philosophyshould depend only on reason. He has permanent importance as the founder of modern inductive method and the attempt at logical systematization ofscientific procedure. He emphasised the importance of induction as opposed to deduction. He wanted to go beyond ‘induction by simple enumeration’ to a process of listin as in his method of discovering the nature of heat, making lists of hotbodies ,cold bodies and bodies of varying degrees of heat. He hoped that these lists would show some characteristic always present in hot bodies and absent in cold bodies, and present in varying degrees in bodies of different degrees of heat. By thismethod he hoped to arrive at general laws. A suggested law should be tested by being applied in new circumstances; if it worked then it was confirmed. This method can help us decide between two theories. Bacon despised the syllogism but also undervalued mathematics as insufficiently experimental. Hostile to Aristotle, thinking highly of Democritus. He did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a divine purpose but he objected to teleological explanation in the actual investigation ofphenomena; everything should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes. He wanted to arrange the observational data upon which science must be based. He saw the scientist as a bee that collected and arranged rather than a collector ant or a spider spinning out his own insides. However,Bacon missed most of what was being done in the science of his day, Copernicus, Kepler, Vesalius and Harvey, who said he” writes like a Lord Chancellor”. Bacon’s inductive method isfaulty through insufficient emphasis on hypothesis. He hoped that merely orderly arrangement of data would make the right hypothesis obvious, but this is not obvious. The framing of hypotheses is the most difficult part of scientific work. Usually somehypothesis is a necessary preliminary to the collection of facts, since the selection of facts demands some way of determining relevance. The part played by deduction is greater than Bacon supposed. Often, when a hypothesis has to be tested, there is a long deductive journey from the hypothesis to some consequence that can be testedby observation. Usually the deduction is mathematical which we know he underestimated. Bacon had underrated the importance of hypothesis and theory and overrated the reliability of the senses. Karl Popper said “ The most important functionof observation and reasoning, and even of intuition and imagination, is to help us in the critical examination of those bold conjectures which are the means by which we probe into the unknown”.
R.J.Holmes - Baconian Science
Pumfrey's repeated claim that Bacon wanted to grab "nature" by the forelock should, along with the erroneous comments about 'torture' and witches, also be corrected. Bacon, (perhaps sensitive to his own lack of fortune after his father's early death), often made reference to the need to "seize Opportunity (Fortuna) by the forelock, in a direct line from Kairos through to the Black Panther's "Seize the time". Shakespeare similarly refers to "Time that bald sexton." (It is not immediately clear how this is "gendered".) It would also have been important to distinguish between B's preference for "light-bringing" (roughly equivalent to 'basic' research) against "fruit-bringing" ('profitable' or applied research). No mention was made that Bacon attempted to explain his approach to a broader readership through the stories in the "Wisdom of the Ancients", and his attitude to nature and experiment is most apparent there in the (very short) Myth of Ericthonius.
Paulpic - out of the frying pan and into the fire
Can Baconian methods of induction be used to reach conclusions that are predetermined by the make up of our human psychology? For example, will we ever reach the comforting thought of an actually (ne potentially)infinite universe that contains no nothingness by finding ever finer infinitesimals and larger exponentials?
Jon - Baconian Science
For a modern example of Baconian Science, where there is hope of gaining understanding from exhaustive data collection and induction rather than hypothesis-driven observation, consider the human genome projects. We now look to sequence a thousand more human genomes and who knows what we will find?
Anon Baconian Science
“To understand is to have understood”To say that the ‘Air Pump’ changed Nature is absurd. To say that the ‘Air Pump’ provided us with another view, angle or perspective of Nature is another question. Nevertheless, another valuable I.O,T program.However, it is quite clear that none have understood what Bacon was attempting to express (language limitations). The key as it were, is in the symbolism. The pyramids, as we see them are the architects representation of the symbol an image. As Aristotle stated “We cannot ... prove geometrical truths by arithmetic”.
Peter Jones: Francis Bacon
Whilst I appreciate that the remit of this programme was a discussion of the relationship between Bacon and Science, I was surprised that there was no mention of the connection between Bacon and the early Rosicrucians, who themselves were very much involved with scientific thought.Also, I cannot let the remark by Professor Stephen Pumfrey concerning "crazy conspiratory theorists" who believe that Bacon was "the writing pen behind Shakespeare" was "obviously nonsense", go unchallenged.A follow-up programme perhaps ?
Robin Jackman -- Baconian Science
Fabulous programme; quite the best thing available on the internet! I particularly enjoyed Rhodri Lewis's attempts to drag us back to what Bacon himself wrote, and to the slightly tense relationship between science and religion in and after the renaissance. (For me, there was some unintentional humour when Patricia Fara remarked that there was still scholarly debate over what Bacon said ... to which I might add that this may very well be the case, but only amongst those who haven't read him very closely.) The phenomenon of Baconianism is fascinating, but surely we have to look at his own writings in as much detail as possible? I'd also loved to have heard some more on the millenarian types clustered around Hartlieb (sp?) who took Bacon's project forward in the years before the Royal Society was founded -- Lewis and Stephen Pumfrey sounded like they had lots more to say. And for the record, the ship sailing beyond the pillars of Hercules on the frontispiece of the Novum organum is not a galleon (as one of the contributors, I forget which, suggested), but a much more powerfully symbolic Man of War. Still, and such grumbles aside, this was a fabulous way to start a Thursday ... Bacon was such an interesting man. Keep them coming!
Redvers - Francis Bacon but no Rodger
As always, an interesting discussion but what a shame You couldn't find a minute or so to mention Roger bacon who was born about 350 years earlier, joined a Franciscan order wrote about the primacy of observation over dogma and suffered for it. Ignoring such lesser characters but more valid pioneers makes Francis seem god-like and gives him credit for battles that were first engaged centuries before his time.
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