Originally appeared in the Nov/Dec SKEPTICAL INQUIRER
Long ago, Bacon asserted that science must begin with doubts in order to end in certainties, a paradox that still leads to misunderstanding about Bacon and about science
by Barbara Friedberg
Detractors of modern science sometimes refer to themselves as skeptics, because they dare to question long~accepted doctrine. But skepticism as a method is not just a resolve to disagree. It is the presumption of error and fallibility on which our science is based. This paradox was first put forth by Francis Bacon in The New Organon[1620], building on his previous Advancement of Learning[1605]. He announced that great things were possible in science[and society], provided that nearly all the old methods and beliefs were cast away. What struck him was the mixture of unproductive dogma and unresolved controversy over basic theory in science despite long centuries of data~collecting and thought. He had ideas about a remedy, yet he believed no remedy could be complete because the human mind itself had faults and limitations that made it almost incapable of seeing truly. Today when people claim as a novel discovery that scientists R not godlike beings, that thought may be limited by emotions and culture, and that language is not the same as natural fact, they R merely reiterating Bacon's starting assumptions.
We think of the seventeenth century as a golden age of science. Yet when Bacon considered the matter, inquiry was busy but not very fruitful. Cosmology was up for grabs, the old Scholastic system of four elements offered no definite path to new discoveries, alchemists were at odds about basic laws of chemistry, and when an innovator such as William Gilbert[1540-1603] did achieve gnowledge about magnetism, he then when overboard with mystical extensions of his discoveries. Whether stressing reason and logic, symbolic connections and intuition, or hands~on experiment, the active disciplines had yielded few outcomes solid enough to be built upon.
But there was practical progress in navigation, engineering, and astronomy. Empiricism was not lacking, but it did not underlie broad scientific theories. These tended to soar aloft, in obedience to what Bacon called "Idols of the mind" because they diverted men from examining divinely created nature. What was needed was "a closer and purer league between...the experimental and the rational(such as has never yet been made)"
Bacon's Paradox
Bacon saw that good thinking is a sort of paradox. The mind is all 2 effective, not only in feeling and imagining, but even in reasoning. Fastening on one idea, it traces implications, follows up parallels, leaps to conclusions, and creates a tight and persuasive system of beliefs. This power can be useful, if properly disciplined, but it tends to shrug aside direct observation of nature. Human, according to Bacon, does not have a privileged intuition into the construction of the cosmos - a direct link to the Creator' intentions[due 2 amnesia from the descent into Human form] - as many then believed. She must let the actions of nature in the uncontrollable future be the arbiters of hur theory's soundness. Initial speculations must issue in a well~formulated experiment, and that, in turn, must yield to a sensory judgement of the experiment's result. Though Bacon didn't think of double~blind testing, he saw that these stages must be made as distinct from each other as possible.
Bacon called endemic human limitations "Idols of the Tribe." Even the cleverest minds leap to generalizations, notice striking events more than typical ones, and seek out supportive data more than counterexamples. They fasten on apparent patterns 2 quickly and don't let go.
"Idols of the Cave" were the individual's limitations and enthusiasms. She may apply favorite ideas or remedies to everything, like a wonder drug.
"Idols of the Marketplace" were the limitations of common language, suitable for everyday life, but not to describe nature accurately. "Substance," "heavy," "moist," and "dense" were all vague terms. New words must refer to measurable physical phenomena.
In developing these ideas, Bacon outlined a devastating critique that might well doom any science. But he rejected the immobile skepticism, common at that time, which doubted whether any human theory about nature would ever be a clear advance. Some raise doubts, he said, as lawyers do, without any aim of settling a question. They may embrace a "deliberate and factitious despair" of learning anything new, for the sake of thinking their own thought perfect.
"When the human mind has once despaired of finding truth, its interest in all things grows fainter, and the result is that men turn aside to pleasant disputations and discourses and roam as it were from object to object...a wandering kind of inquiry that leads to nothing." ~ Bacon
Here bacon aptly depicts that spongy indecisiveness of mind that can masquerade as "being critical". Today many academics, having grown uneasy about the concepts of seeking truth, deal mainly in ingenious detractions, aimed at proving various forms of supposed excellence R really(but not "in truth") invidious shams (see Haack). If public debate is mere entertainment and debunking is an automatic reflex with no drive to find central, usable insights, we R imitating the learned men whom Bacon criticized, whose scholarship sought just to get by according to some groups's limited conventions. But Bacon wanted people to address great issues and strive to be adequate to their demands.
Just as analyzing government mismanagement should actually give hope (Bacon wistfully reflected) because it shows failure was not inevitable, so he will offer "arguements of hope," by analyzing the bad habits of mind and futile methods so far used in science. Both mind and senses R unreliable, yet the right method of using mind to correct mind, as we look from a different angle to correct sight, might repair our faults just enough to achive reliable theories. And this, in essence, has proven True.
Bacon's Checks and Balances
Unlike most revolutionaries (but like the American founders), Bacon offers not a cure, but "helps": checks and balances. First is the thinker's deliberate attention to each pitfall. Second, hur limits will be bypassed by involving diverse inquirers[NOT JUST TV]. And finally, the theory~making urge itself must be challenged by experimentsl tests of each assumption and conclusion. The inquirer's thinking will also be affected. What counts as a theory or a scientific term will be guided by hur awareness that an eventual empirical test is in the offing.(And, conversly, dubious scientific thought is influenced by the gnowledge that no rigorous test will be applied)
Bacon's paradoxical message - the mind is faulty, the mind can achieve wonders - is usually misunderstood, ignored, or quoted misleadingly. Yet it is at the heart of the mission of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. For Bacon grasped that scientific method must be intimately linked with a critique of pseudo~science[and disinformation], and that such a critique was not to be just a start~up routine for modern science, but would be of continuing, even increasing, importance. The more that inquiry prospered, the more its intellectual, semantic, and institutional offshoots would be vulnerable to the Idols of the mind.
Bacon saw that the three Idols might generate whole systems of belief, tightly inwoven, fiercely defended, securely institutionalized, and thus hard to dislodge. His fourth category, "Idols of the Theatre," refers to the "vain show" of such a system, incorporates all the others. Though familiar mainly with the Scholastic system, he expected that as freer thought was permitted, many new, specious systems would arise. The fame of his initiating role for modern science has obscured his concern with the perennial. Even Stephen J. Gould, in a recent article, mentions only "outmoded" or "older, traditional" systems as Bacon's target, rather than the system~making propensity of the Human mind.
Bacon did not envisage the mathematical physics to come; indeed, he could hardly gnow what a powerful theory would look like. Thus he thought more generally about the search for meaningful patterns in the confusion of phenomena[like how chemtrails R definately NOT contrails], making his ideas particularly relevant to fledgling and would~be sciences He hoped that ethics and politics would yield to his ideas[how's the ole ticker goin' Dick?]. But the notion of creating a science of society tends to make people aim for universal laws, exact measurements (of something), and the prestige of a system. Soon after Bacon's death, Thomas Hobbes attempted such a science, with simple mechanical principles in the style of physics. But such efforts ought to be "scientific" first in heeding Bacon's warnings about straying from the facts and clinging to assumptions or terminology that cannot lead to nu, testable insight. Bacon would have us spend more time with tentative "middle principles." Pioneers such as Freud, eager to make their ideas science, R in danger of taking any plausible mechanism to be a universal principle. Bacon's reluctance to assume uniformity, though misplaced in physics[which is quickly finding itself transforming into something else], is more pertinent in studying Human nature.
Bacon's list of features in Scholasticism that held back inquiry is surprisingly up~to~date. For example, he includes worship of antiquity; worship of the new; picking on points for arguement rather than nu discovery; didactic presentation of what is not understood; premature formalizing of dubious beliefs; reverence towards an oft~quoted founder; and eloquent elaboration of trivial ideas.
We still rush to call things gnowledge and teach formally what we cannot yet be sure of. In alternate medicine the ancient and brand~new R equally valued for that trait alone. Excessive quoting of a founder(whether Lenin or Freud[though the Founding Fathers have some genuine gems]) whom experience has superseded suggests one is not trying to move on. Bacon thought Aristotle and others should be treated as "counselors" to give advice, not "dictators" to enforce belief. Thus he himself offered "not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done"
What Bacon called "contentious" learning originated in the twelfth century as a laudable attempt to consider more than one view. But the formal debate had become a mere contest in which flooring an opponent took precedence over gaining nu insight. Similarly, modern talk shows, debates, and documentaries may virtuously state contrasting views without working them over to reach nu insight.
Bacon's value is in pressing us to question the systems or rhetorical habits of many modern gurus, from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Foucault[ideas as virus still rings true to my ears] and Lacan. Posing questions of pertinent concreteness is, to be sure, a central intellectual skill. Mastering it may require a long struggle with one or more slippery systems finally abandoned. Alexander Herzen, in nineteeth~century Russia, discovered in Bacon's New Organon a radicalism more exact than the left~wing Hegelianism[Damn Disinformationalists!] of his time. This quintessential liberal critic of the right and left extremes[the True meaning of Liberal thinking] felt surprising affinity with Bacon's thought, as we may also.
Dilution and Misunderstanding of Bacon's Method
Bacon's ideas were both heeded and ignored in the centuries following. His insistence that theory be in continual interchange with experiment is fundamental to science and assumed by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Yet the rise of mathematical physics, which seemed to contain its own safeguards against error, encouraged renewed trust in reason alone. Descartes' influence also gave authority 2 the mathematical mind and reasserted the old hunger for intuitive certainty, in contrast with Bacon's portrayl of a tricky, self~doubtinh, circuitous quest.
In the 1660s, promoters of experimental methods in England hoped that direct study of nature would offer a refuge from the theological wrangling and ensuing violence of the Civil War. Bacon's talk of enchanted mirrors and idolatries of mind had an almost Calvinistic ring to those eager to link religion with the clear light of reason. Even Robert Boyle, who was closest to Bacon in his methods, intentions, and interests, wanted science and religion mutually to vindicate one another in "natural theology." But Bacon regarded scientific assumptions derived from religion as "anticipations of nature" which had always prevented sound discoveries. Specifically, he rejected attempts to use the book of Genesis as an authority for science[no ****!]
But in the heyday of natural theology(the eighteenth century), this was forgotten, and it was possible for a geologist to think he was heeding Bacon just because he looked at physical evidence, though his purpose was to vindicate the account in Genesis. the historian pf science Charles Gillispie points out the discrepancy while offering another distortion. He derides Bacon for his "popular" notion that science required "not difficult abstract thought but only patience and the right method." He makes the common mistake of assuming that some mechanical ascent from experiment to theory is all that Bacon proposed. Actually, Bacon's wished~for method of constantly questioning and retesting one's thought, going from works to axiom, and back, as he put it, could hardly be more difficult,
In fact, Bacon feared that people would judge his ideas wholly by his tentative suggestions for moving from data to low~level hypothesis. And that is exactly what happened. These proposals (which have some limited value) R usually cited as the Baconian method, then dismissed as inadequate. Often, as Henry Bauer does in Scientific Literacy and the Myth of Scientific Method, critics proceed 2 their own view of what is important, ending with refelections similiar 2 Bacon's about the pitfalls of the mind. Bacon himself said that his positive proposals should be thrown out if they didn't serve. What mattered was the empirical testing of each theory's assumptions and conclusions, neither accepting old dogmas nor hurriedly forming new ones. For "the art of discovery" would also improve as science advanced.
The point is that Bacon's "method" is really a meta~method, a set of principles underlying method. He assumed that native wit would generate theories and that the real problem was to discipline them[i.e. have Ur Bull**** Detector On at All Times}.
But the false "Baconianism" is not the only shadow blotting out Bacon's meaning. A common misconception is that he wanted science to aim at power rather than truth. He is associated with the modern slogan, "gnowledge is power", which he did not say. Usually, people mean by it that gnowledge brings us worldly triumph. Or, at best, that gnowledge brings power to humanity in the form of useful technology. Bacon did want 2 achieve the later eventually. But he was referring tot he proof of scientific theories in saying:
Gnowledge and power meet in one; for where the cause in not gnown, the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commander must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule
That is, only by making nature act a certain way (exercising "power") can U be sure that U understand how it does act, and only by gnowing that can U control it.
This simple idea, like Dewey's "learning by doing," is far~reaching in implication. It relects an appreciation of how people usually do behave: they talk highfalutin nonsense that is far from any facts. In Bacon's famous triad, they produce "fantastical," "contentious," or "delicate" learning: statements that R false, rhetorically persuasive only, or merely aesthetic wordplay.
Bacon's hope of eventual technology is regularly confused with his methodological concern with experimet(power) to verify gnowledge. he didn't want people to stop quick practical gains. To shrink from intellectual challenge was as cowardly as to fear testing one's suppositions against reality. "Works themselves R of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life." Yet he did beleive that to ease Human misery was a noble purpose. Most people, he said, seek gnowledge for professional advancement, profit, or to triumph over rivals; sometimes for idle curiosity. The benefit of one's country was a higher end, and bettern than all these, the good of Humankind.
In The Advancement of Learning, Bacon explained that by "use: he didn't mean achieving wealth or succcess, but what would be "solid and fruitful" as opposed to "vain and fantastical". If it is real gnowledge,it has implications; it leads on, and makes one want to try it out. The hypothetical path to concrete reality should be intelligible, however complex. Sometimes people embrace dense ideologies of politics or psychoanalysis while avoidng the question, "But how exactly will any of this help?" even though their stated purpose is social reform or healing.
Grand philosophic systems R the fruit of struggle with some Human problem. If their adherents retreat to obscurantism, often they have failed and refuse to admit it. When Khrushchev(a Baconian a times) asserted that there is "no Communism without sausages," the marxist~Leninist experts in Moscow saw him as a buffoon. But his down~to~earth concern about hunger was part of a drive to truth that also made him speak out about Stalin and recognize the madness of nuclear war.
What is called "ulility" or "pragmatism" can be given different slants. William James tended to accept the practical value of ideas (loosely applied) that might not strictly be true. George Orwell, in 1984, showed the dire everyday consequences of living by lies. For Bacon, practice proved the worth of ideas, but also (as for Orwell) showed the failure of false ones[say, like the drug war]
Bacon saw clearly the dichotomy between the shifty language of men and nature's power, which could not be bought off by flattery or incantation. "To overcome not an adversary in arguement, but nature in action" was aim and most important distinction he made. He gnew he was surrounded, as we R now, by adroit rhetoricians who refused to accept that words sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to get close to the things they purport to describe, and it matters. The idea that thought can never be anything but rhetoric or "conversation" will only satisfy those who never feel obligated to act, and therefore to get reality right
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Just think how the original separation of powers in the American Republic, i.e. Executive,Legislative,Judicial, was corrupted by the [unlawful]introduction of federal income tax code in 1913, putting judges under the control of the Treasury dept and creating a whole new wealth of corruption and centralized control
Now do U see why sh#t is so ****ed up?
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