Francis Bacon: From Magic To Science

Francis Bacon From Magic to Science by Paolo Rossi translated from the Italian by Sacha Rabinovitch London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Translated fro m the Italian FRANCESCO BACONE*. DALLA MAGIA ALLA SCIENZA (Editori Laterza, B ari 1957) First published in Great Britain ig 6 8 by Routledge & Kegan Paul L td Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane London, E .C .4 Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner L td Frome and London English translation © Routledge & Kegan Paul L td ig 6 8 No part o f this book may be reproduced in any fo rm without permission fro m the publisher, except fo r the quotation o f brief passages in criticism S B N 7100 6016 5 ! SIS DfV73$E to the memory of my father :‘> Contents Introduction Introduction to the English edition I The Mechanical Arts, Magic, and Science page ix xvi i II The Refutation of Philosophies 36 III The Classical Fable 73 IV Logic, Rhetoric, and Method 135 V Language and Communication 152 VI Rhetorical Tradition and the Method of Science 186 List of Abbreviations used in the Notes 224 Notes 227 Index 273 4 I!,i t \ Introduction Among the asserters of free reason’s claim Our nation’s not the least in worth or fame The world to Bacon does not only owe Its present knowledge, but its future too. JO HN DRYDEN On y voit que Locke est successeur de Bacon, ce qui est incon­ testable; ony voit que Locke, k son tour, engendre Helvetius; etque tous ces ennemis du genre humain r6unis . . . descendent de Bacon. J . DE MAISTRE Francis Bacon lived between 1561 and 1626 in an age of con­ flicting political and cultural ideas. In those years the seeds of England’s political and industrial power were sown, the founda­ tions of the Empire were laid; England was drawn into inter­ national politics by her support of the Dutch rebels and the French Protestants; Raleigh’s establishment in Virginia opened the doors to colonisation; England defeated the Spanish Armada and sacked Cadiz; Scotland, Ireland, and England were united to form a political whole; the struggle of Parlia­ ment against monopolies foreshadowed the increasing inter­ vention of both Houses in financial and commercial legislation and religious matters. This was the age of Elizabeth, Marlowe, and Shakespeare; an age of vitality and exuberance where new urges rubbed shoulders with century-old traditions; a decisive age both for English and European history. Many aspects of this civilisation were not new but derived ix \ \\ v INTRODUCTION from medieval English and European culture. For instance, /the typical seventeenth-century intellectual probings are a direct legacy ofj^ccamist empiricism, the Occamist concept j of knowledge as experienceTancl of nominalism—of all those doctrines, in fact, which questioned the Thomist compromise and the translation of Christianity into Aristotelian terms on which Scholastic learning was based. A new science of nature and a new form of religious belief were inspired by Occam’s notion of experience. Further, a revival of the classics, the anti-clerical revolt, and the birth of a new philosophy of nature widened