HISTORY-ECONOMIC THOUGHT

2. THE NEW 0RGANON

''Bacon's greatest_ performance," says his bitterest critic, "is the first book of the N ovum Organum."11 Never did a man· put more life into logic, making in~uctio~ an_ epic _adventu~e a~d a conquest. If one must study logic, let him begin with_ this book. This part of human philosophy which regards logic is disagreeable to the taste of many, as appearing to them no other than a net, and a snare of thorny subtlety .... But if we would rate things according to their real worth, the rational sciences are the keys to all the rest." 78

Philosophy has been barren so long, says Bacon, because she needed a ftew method to make her fertile. The great mistake of the Greek philos- ophers was that they spent so much time in theory, so little in observation. But thought should be the aide of observation, not its substit~te. "Man," says the firs t aphorism of the N ovum· Organum, as if flinging a challenge to all metaphysics,-"Man, as the minist~r and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature · • • permit him; and neither knows nor is capable of more." The prede- cessors of Socrates were in this matter sounder than his followers; Democ-· ritus, in particular, had a nose for facts, rather th"-n an eye for the

761b 'd " t ,, 11, I, 77M I . acau ay, op. cit., p. 92. 78Adv. of L., v, 1.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY 100 h.l ophy has advanced so little since Aristotle's clouds. No wonder_ that~

1 0 tls 's methods. "To go beyond Aristotle by the

. h b smg Ansto e . h . . l day; 1t as een . k h t a borrowed light can mcrease t e ongma . 1 to thm t a d f 1 . light of Anstot e is k ,, 7 0 Now after two thousan years o ogic-

h . h ·t is ta en. ' . h f light from w 1c 1 h. •nvented by Aristotle, philosophy as allen chopping with the ~a~

0

1 ~:7r:verence. All these medieval theories, theo-

so low that none ~ 1 t be cast out and forgotten; to renew herself d d. tat1ons mus · d rems an ispu . . wi·th a clean slate and a cleansed mm .

. h t begm agam philosop Y mus f •s the Expurgation of the Intellect. We must h fi t t p there ore, 1 . T e rs _s e ' hildren innocent of isms and abstractions, washed c~ear

becom_e a~ little~ reco:ceptions. We must destroy the Idols of the mmd. of prejudices an P the word (reflecting perhaps the Protestant re-

A ·d 1 as Bacon uses . . n 1 0 '. h·p) is a picture taken for a reality, a thought mis- . ection of image-wors i ' · d d h fi bl J h. Errors come under this hea ; an t e rst pro em taken for a t mg. B . . t nd dam the sources of these errors. aeon proceeds of logic is to race a . " " 'd C d·11 · ti famous analysis of fallacies; no man, sai . on 1 ac, now to a JUS Y h " "h better known than Bacon the causes of uman error.

Tash are first Idols of the Tribe,-fallacies natural to human-ese errors , , d" (b P , " • · I "For man's sense is falsely asserte y rotagoras Man 1ty m genera. . is the measure of all things") "to be the standard of t~ungs : on the con- t all the perceptions both of the senses and the mmd, bear reference rary, ' . d b to man and not to the universe; and the human mm resem les those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects . . . and distort and disfigure them."80 Our thoughts are pictures rather of ourselves than of their objects. For example, "the human under- standing, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a . greater degree of order and regularity in things than it really finds ..•. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles." 81 Again,

the human understanding, whe.n any proposition has been once laid down ( either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe, or despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was sho~n in temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the penl of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognize the. powe~ of ~he gods. : .. "But where are the portraits of those that have penshed m spite of their vows?" All superstition is much the same, whether it be that. of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common,82

'lllValerius Terminus. 811bid., i, 45.

80N-3.v. Org., i, 41. 82loid · i ., 1, 46.

• FRANCIS BA .

''Having fi:rst determined th . CON 101 resorts to experience; and be ~.queStion_ according to his will, man then leads her about like a captiv: _mg her mto conformity with his placets, understanding is no dry light ~n a pr?cession." 88 In short, "the human affections, whence proceed s~ie ut recei_ves an infusion from the will ana

' F nces which b 11 d ' . would. . . . or what a man h d may e ca e sciences as one believes." 84 Is it not so? a rather were true, he more readily

Bacon gives at this point a wo~d f very student of nature take th· 0 golden counsel. "In general let e is as a rule that h t h. . d . nd dwells upon with peculi . f .- . w a ever is mm seizes a ar satis action is t b h ld . . . d that so much the more . ' 0 e e m suspicion; an care 1s to be take · d r · h h estions to keep the under t d' n, m ea mg wit sue qu . ' s a~ mg even and clear." 85 "The under-

standing must not be allowed to Jump and fl f . • d f 1 h h' Y rom particulars to remote aX1oms an o a most t e ighest generality. • . • •. b h h . , · · • it must not be supplied with wmgs, ut rat er ung with weights to k 't f 1 • d ,,s6 Th · · • eep 1 rom eapmg an flying. e 1magmat10n may be the greatest f h · 11 · h ld b 1 · enemy o t e mte ect, whereas 1t s ou e on y its tentative and experiment.

A second class of errors Bacon calls J dols of the Cave 1· · d' ·a 1 _,1 "F -errors pecu iar to them 1v1 ua man. or every one ... has a cave or den of his own which refracts and discolors the light of nature"; this is his characte; as for~e d by natur~ and nurture, and _by ~s mood or condition of body and mmd. Some mmds, e. g., are const1tut1onally analytic, and see differ- ences everywhere; others are constitutionally synthetic, and see resem- blances; so we have the scientist and the painter on the one hand, and on the other hand the poet and the philosopher. Again, "some disposi- tions evince an unbouI).ded admiration for antiquity, others eagerly em- brace novelty; only a few can preserve the just medium, and neither tear up what the ancients have correctly established, nor despise the just innovations of the moderns." 87 Truth knows no partie!S.

Thirdly, Idols of the Market-place, arising "from the commerce and association of men with one another. For men converse by means of language; but words are imposed according to the understanding of the crowd ; and there arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wqnderful obstruction to the mind." 88 Philosophers deal out infinites with the careless assurance of grammarians handling infinitives; and yet does any man know what this "infinite" is, or whether it has even taken the precaution of existing? Philosophers talk about "first cause uncaused," or "first mover unmoved"; but are not these again fig-leaf phrases used !o cover naked ignorance, and perhaps indicative of a guilty conscience m the user? Every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be cause- less, nor any mover unmoved. Perhaps the greatest reconstruction in philosophy would be simply this-that we should stop lying.

68lbid., i, 63. a.Ibid., i, 49. 86lbid., i, 58.

88lbid., i, io4c. s11bid., i, 56. 88

lbid., i1 43.

102 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY "Lastly, there are idols which have migrated into men's minds from

the various dogmas of philosophers, and also from wrong laws of demon- stration. These I call Idols of the Theatre, because in my judgment all the received systems of philos?phy are but so many stage-~lays, r~present- ing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scemc fashion .... And in the plays of this philosophic theater you may obse~e t~e same thing which is found in the theater of the poets,-that stones invented for the stage are more compact and elegant, and more as Vye would wish them to be than true stories out of history." 89 The world as Plato describes it 'is merely a world constructed by Plato, and pictures Plato rather than the world.

We shall never get far along towards the truth if these idols are still to trip us up, even the best of us, at ev_ery ~~rn. We nee~ new mode~ of reasoning, new tools for the understandmg. An_d as the immense reg10ns of the West Indies had never been discovered, 1f the use of the compass had not first been known, it is no wonder that the discovery and ad- vancement of arts hath made no greater progress, when the art of invent- ing and discovering of the sciences remains hitherto unknown." 90 "And surely it would be disgraceful, if, while the regions of the material globe . . . have been in our times laid widely open and revealed, the intel- lectual globe should remain shut up within the narrow limits of old discoveries." 91

Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as an indubitable starting-point, and never think of putting this assump- tion itself to the test of observation or experiment. Now "if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties" ( alas, it is not, quite inevita- ble). Here is a note common in the youth of modern philosophy, part of its declaration of independence; Descartes too would presently talk of the necessity of "methodic doubt" as the cobweb-clearing pre-requisite of honest thought.

Bacon proceeds to give an admirable description of the scientific ?1ethod of_ inquiry. "There remains simple experience; which, if taken as 1t comes, 1s called accident" ("empirical"), "if sought for, experiment. :, .. The true method of experience first lights the candle" (hypothesis), and the~ by means of the candle shows the way" ( arranges and delimits

the experiment) ; "com~encing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bunglmg nor erratic and from it educino- axioms and fro~ e_stablished axioms again new e~periments."92 (We have her~as agam m a later passage93 which speaks of the results of initial experi· ments as a "first v· t " 'd h m age to gui e further research-an explicit, thoug

89lbid., i, 44. 90Adv. of L e1 • ll'JJbid i 8 es! . .. ., v, 2. Nov. Org., i, 84.

·> , 2 • bid., 11, 20.

FRANCIS BACON 103 perhaps in~dequa!e, recognition of that need for hypothesis-, experi:r~ent and deduction which some of Bacon's critics suppose him to have entirely overlooked.) We must go to nature instead of to books, traditions and authorities; we must "put nature on the rack and compel her to bear

" . h witness even against erself, so that we may control her to our ends. We must gather together from every quarter a "natural history" of the world, built by the united research of Europe's scientists. We must have induction. _

But induction does not mean "simple enumeration" of all the data; conceivably, this might be _ endless, and useless; no mass of material can by itself make science. This would be like "chasing a quarry over an open country"; we must narrow and enclose our field in order to capture our prey. The method of ind1;1ct_ion ;must include a technique for the classi- fication of data and the elimination of hypotheses; so that by the progres- sive canceling of possible explanations one only shall at last remain. Per- haps the most useful item in this technique is the "table of more or less," which lists instances in which two qualities or conditions increase or decrease together, and so reveals, presumably, a causal relation between the simultaneously varying phenomena. So Bacon, asking, What is heat? -seeks for some factor that increases with the increase of heat, and decreases--.. with its decrease; he finds, after long analysis, an exact correla- tion between heat.and motion; and his conclusion that heat is a form of motion constitutes one of his Jew specific contributions to natural science.

By this insistent accumulation and analysis of data we come, in Bacon's phrase, to the form of the phenomenon which we study,-to its ·secret nature and its inner essence. The theory of forms in Bacon' is very much like the theory of ideas in Plato: a metaphysics of science. "When we speak of forms we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations of simple action which arrange and constitute any simple nature .... The form of heat or the _form of light, there£ ore, means no more than the law of heat or the law of light." 94 (In a similar strain Spinoza was to say ~hat the law of the circle is its substance.) "For although nothing exists 10 n~ture except individual bodies exhibiting clear individual effects ac- ~0rdmg to particular laws; yet, in each branch of learning, those very tws-their investigation, discovery and development-are the founda-

both of theory and of practice." 95 Of theory and of practice; one Wit out the other is useless and perilous; knowledge that does not gen- erate ach · . . . d W . ievement 1s a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankin . bee stnve to learn the forms of things not for the sake of the forms but

cause by k · · k h. · th i""a now1ng the forms the laws we may rema e t mgs 1n e .... ,

1 ge of d • ' ' · · and b . our esire. So we study mathematics in order to reckon quantities . u1Id b 'd · · h Jllngie of s r~ ges; we study psychology In order to find our way In t e

8'I b· ociety. When science has sufficiently ferreted out the forms of zd ••

., 11, 13, 17. \ 116Jb'd .. Z ., 11, 2.