Francis Bacon and the advancement of science
It was the ambition of the English thinker and politician Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
to show that
science was not Mephistophelean but Promethean, an activity not harmful but beneficial to man.
His work proved the culmination of a process of thought from the late fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, which led to the rebirth of confidence in 'Nature'. Bacon reclaimed the physical world
from the grip of Satan, He successfully showed that science did not necessarily involve a Faustian
pact with the Devil, but could be reconciled with religion. Indeed, he paved the way to a form of
scientific deism, with God the Artificer revealing himself in his created world as much as in his
scriptures.
But in his ambition Bacon also established the Western scientific project, to conquer
and control
nature. Having separated science from religion, it was only a short step for man to see himself as
the measure of all things. The new scientist of the Renaissance became a man striving for infinite
power, consumed by the ambition to become the 'great Emperor of the world'.
Bacon has long been venerated as the great champion of intellectual liberty, as the
man who drew
the attention of philosophers from abstract speculation to the direct observation of nature. It was
his
method 'continually to dwell among things soberly'. He insisted that those who 'determine not to
conjecture and guess, but to find out and know; not to invent fables and romances of worlds, but to
look into, and dissect the nature of this real world’, must consult ‘only things themselves'.
To
achieve this end, Bacon wished to keep science separate from religion, constantly reminding his
readers how the progress of science had been hindered by the conservative prejudice of Scholastic
theologians. 'It is therefore most wise,' he wrote, 'soberly to render unto faith the things that are
faith's.'
In his enthusiastic celebration of science, shorn of sacred philosophy, he inadvertently
summed up
the new conquering attitude towards nature in the brave new world of Renaissance science.
'Knowledge itself is power,' Bacon declared in 1597. Rejecting the deductive reasoning
of the
Scholastic philosophers of his day, he proposed in Of the Advancement of Learning (1605)
his own
inductive method of interpreting nature, by which the results of experience are studied, in order to
reach a general conclusion.
Science, he argued, would restore man's dominion over the animals, which he had lost
after the
Fall. Having been expelled from the Garden of Eden through eating of the tree of knowledge, man's
only way forward was to eat further of the tree and create his own garden in this vale of tears. It
would be hard and painful work, but the goal was comfort and ease on earth. In this way Bacon
reconciled traditional Christianity with the new technological optimism.
Bacon considered that man has a spirit or reasoning power, which makes him like God,
and a
bodily appetite, which makes him like the animals. The virtuous man should therefore seek 'victory
over his nature' and to 'alter and subdue nature' within himself as well as outside himself. The value
of taking this approach to the study of nature was precisely because it 'perfects nature' because all
natural abilities are 'like natural plants, that need pruning by study'.
Bacon considered nature incomplete and corrupt; it was the duty of man to transform
and improve
it. He is not only the lord of creation but its principle of order:
Man, if we look to final causes, may be regarded as the centre of the world; insomuch
that if man
were taken away from the world, the rest would seem to be all astray, without aim or purpose . . .
and leading to nothing. For Bacon, the whole world works together in the service of man; and there
is nothing from which he does not derive use and fruit . . . insomuch that all things seem to be
going about man's business and not their own.
Bacon castigated his contemporaries for taking an aesthetic interest in nature; 'we
respect,
contemplate and reverence Nature,' he insisted, 'more than is fit'. It is not something of value or
beauty in itself, since it 'took beginning from the Word of God by means of confused matter, and
the entrance of prevarication and corruption'. It is therefore man's task to improve and perfect fallen
nature through his science and art. The way to achieve this is to try to understand nature in order
to control it.
Bacon's attitude to nature comes across most clearly in his metaphor of gardening.
He felt making
a garden, in which man imposes his will on nature, to be the purest of human pleasures. His ideal
allows for the presence of the wild, but it is carefully controlled and circumscribed. In his
management plan there would be 'a green in the entrance, a heath, or desert, in the going forth,
and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on both sides'. The garden itself would best be
square, encompassed on all sides with a 'stately arched hedge'. It is the model of a bowling green,
with the wilderness beyond the hedges intended to emphasize the security and comfort within.
As Bacon makes clear in his Utopia New Atlantis, the avowed aim of his
philosophy, and the end of
the foundation of his ideal society, is 'the knowledge of cause, and secret motions of things; and
the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible'. But Bacon is
not content to observe nature and direct it; he wishes to transform it. A central institution on the
island of Bensalem is a centre for scientific study called Solomon's House. Its spokesman
anticipates modern genetic engineering for plants and animals. He boasts that they experiment
with grafting and inoculating, making by artificial means trees and flowers come on earlier or later
than their seasons, and to reach fruition more speedily than by their natural course. They also
make their fruit greater and sweeter, and of a differing taste, smell, colour and figure from their
natural ones.
The most prophetic passage comes when he waxes lyrically about the trials they make
upon
beasts, birds and fishes:
‘We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which
we use not only for view
or rareness, but likewise for dissection and trials, that thereby we may take light what may be
wrought upon the body of man. Wherein we find many strange effects, as continuing life in them,
though divers parts, which you account vital, be perished and taken forth; resuscitating of some
that seem dead in appearance, and the like. We try, also, all poisons, and other medicines upon
them as well as chirurgery as physic. By art, likewise, we make them greater or taller than their
kind is, and, contrariwise, dwarf them, and stay their growth; we make them more fruitful and
bearing than their kind is, and, contrariwise, barren and not generative; also we make them different
in colour, shape, activity many ways. We find means to make conmixtures of divers kinds, which
have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is’.
Bacon is the arch-imperialist of nature, wishing to extend human control to its furthest
corners. The
Royal Society was partly inspired by Solomon's House and, on its inauguration, was proud to
invoke Bacon's name.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Bacon was a powerful statesman as well as a
philosopher.
Having served as Solicitor General, he eventually became Lord Chancellor. In the essay 'Of
a King',
it was his considered opinion that 'a king is a mortal god on earth, unto whom the living God hath
lent his own name as a great honour', a view which no doubt facilitated his own placement at the
court. The Romantic poet and visionary William Blake was astonished by how much 'Contemptible
Knavery & Folly' Bacon's Essays contained. Blake declared 'Bacon's philosophy has Ruin'd
England'; two hundred years later one might add that it has ruined the earth itself. It was only in
our
century that the full nightmare of the Lord Chancellor's vision has been realised. It is interesting
that
his major work was dedicated to King James I of England, who's claim to scholarship rests on his
monograph supporting witchcraft, as an expression of the supernatural power of the Devil.
Descartes and the mastery of nature
Bacon's European contemporary was the Frenchman Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who is
considered the 'father of modern philosophy', and also founded analytic geometry. Physics for him
was nothing but mechanics, that is, applied geometry. All physical objects are matter in motion. It
was therefore natural for him to liken the entire universe, including the human body, to a machine.
Everything in his scheme of things consists of matter governed by mechanistic principles. God had
set the universe in motion according to fixed mathematical laws, no different from the laws through
which a king rules his subjects. In his Discourse on Method (1637), Descartes argued that
the goal
of science is to discover these laws, in order to understand the elements in nature in sufficient
detail, so that 'we might put them in the same way to all the uses for which they are appropriate,
and thereby make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature'. Human freedom may
have been the central goal for Descartes, but he could only see it in terms of mastery.
Hobbes and the rights of nature
Hobbes was another contemporary of Bacon, who best summed up the imperial view of
nature in
terms of its state, its rights and the social contract. In his view, in a state of nature without the
law
to restrain individuals, every man would be prey to violent invasion of his life and property by his
fellows.
‘There would be no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain:
and Culture of the
Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious
Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge
of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of
all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish,
and short’.
For Hobbes this is not merely hypothetical, for he claims that the 'savage people
in many places in
America ‘lived in such a brutish manner, in a condition of warre, as is of every man, against
every
man'. The vision has continued to haunt the Western mind and finds expression much later in
William Golding's Lord of the Flies. But it is profoundly unhistorical and unanthropological,
a flight
of dark imagination and pathological dread.
The right of nature, Hobbes continues, is the liberty of each man to use his power
to preserve his
own life. The corollary is the law of nature, 'a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by
which man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life'. But Hobbes deduces a second
law of nature for reasonable men to lay down their right to all things, and limit their freedom if all
do
the same for the sake of peace. They would, however, have to form a contract and transfer their
rights to a person or body who would make their agreement stick, since for the cynical Hobbes
'Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words'. Obligation to the laws of the state would last only
as long as the sovereign had sufficient coercive power to protect its citizens. Hobbes's sovereign is
a self-perpetuating and absolute ruler, who can only be changed by rebellion. As for man's
obligations to animals, they do not exist, because to make covenants with 'brute beasts' is
impossible.
Hobbes offers a brilliant analysis of Western man in a market economy, striving for
more power to
obtain wealth and status. Indeed, he insists that 'the Value, or Worth of a man, is as of all other
things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power'. At this time,
Hobbes's account of equal obligation and natural right was an advance on the doctrine of the divine
right of kings. He also recognizes the equal ability, equal right and equal obligation of all citizens.
But he has a highly atomistic view of society as composed of a mass of calculating individuals.
The title page of Leviathan symbolically shows a crowned sovereign whose
body is made up of a
multitude of individuals. Wielding a sword in one hand and a mace in the other, he overlooks the
ordered works of man in transforming nature: a cultivated landscape and walled city. He is flanked
by a castle and a church, which represent civil and ecclesiastical authority. It is significant that
Hobbes should call his absolute state the Leviathan, the sea monster in the Bible, synonymous
with a huge and powerful thing. He called his historical account of the Civil War the Behemoth,
another gigantic animal, probably inspired by a hippopotamus. He wished to frighten his
contemporaries with the power of these mythical creatures, which could wreak havoc on frail
humanity.
In the final analysis, Hobbes stands as the very antithesis of an ecological sensibility
with his
mechanical view of nature and man, his nightmarish depiction of the state of nature, his celebration
of power, and his artificial and absolute state. Hobbes applies Galileo's and Bacon's mechanical
philosophy to psychology and politics with disastrous results. His system fails to resolve the
paradox, that if human beings are as Hobbes describes them, then how can they rationally decide
to make a contract to form a government or even hold together as a community? As his
contemporary Sir William Temple observed; 'Nor do I know, if men are like Sheep, why they need
any government: Or if they are like wolves, how can they suffer it.'
Within industrialism, nonhuman nature is not seen as what it is, but as what it has
become through
the adoption of the late 16th century European imperialist view. It is regarded as a conglomerate of
resources. Forests are thought of as so many board feet of lumber, lakes rivers and oceans are
viewed as fisheries or sources of water, or dumps, in which case they are analysed in terms of their
"assimilation capacities" to absorb pollution. Farms come to be seen as potential subdivisions,
a
self- fulfilling perception because farm land is taxed according to its "potential," making
agriculture
difficult to sustain when pressures for suburbanization arise. Heidegger, in his critique of
technology, notes, ‘Everything everywhere is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand
. . .
the real everywhere, more or less distinctly, becomes standing- reserve.’ Under industrial regimes,
nonhuman nature becomes something to be restructured in accord with human intention, a
collection of resources to be ‘developed’ for human use.
This was a view of nature taken by the pre-industrial Europeans who were to colonise
North
America. American relations of production were premised upon ecological abundance, and so
attached a higher value to labour than had been the case in Europe. Returns to labour were so high
in America because returns to land were so low.
Land in New England became for the colonists a form of capital, a thing consumed for
the express
purpose of creating augmented wealth. It was the land-capital equation that created the two central
ecological contradictions of the colonial economy. One of these was the inherent conflict between
the land uses of the colonists and those of the Indians. The ecological relationships, which
European markets created in New England, were inherently antithetical to earlier Indian economies,
and so those economies were transformed as much through the agency of the Indians as the
Europeans. By 1800, Indians could no longer live the integrated life that carried them through
seasons of want and plenty that their ancestors had, for the simple reason that the natural
productivity of those seasons had changed beyond recognition.
But there was a second ecological contradiction in the human economy as well. Quite
simply, the
colonists' economic relations of production were ecologically self- destructive. They assumed the
limitless availability of more land to exploit, and in the long run that was impossible. Peter Kalm
described the process whereby colonial farmers used new land until it was exhausted, then turned
it to pasture and cut down another tract of forest. "This kind of agriculture will do for a time,"
he
wrote, "but it will afterwards have bad consequences, as every one may clearly see." Not only
colonial agriculture, but lumbering and the fur trade as well,were able to ignore the problem of
continuous yield because of the temporary gift of nature which fuelled their continuous expansion.
When that gift was finally exhausted, ecosystems and economies alike were forced into new
relationships. It became clear that expansion could not continue indefinitely.
The implications of this second ecological contradiction stretched well beyond the
colonial period.
We often tend to associate ecological changes primarily with industrialism's ideology of nature that
produced the cities and factories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, changes with
similar roots took place just as profoundly in the farms and countrysides of the colonial period. The
transition to capitalism alienated the products of the land as much as the products of human
labour, and so transformed wildlife communities as profoundly as it did human ones. By integrating
New England ecosystems into an ultimately global capitalist economy, colonists and Indians
together began a dynamic and unstable process of ecological change, which had in no way ended
by 1800. We live with their legacy today. When the systems geographer Carl Sauer wrote in the
twentieth century that Americans had "not yet learned the difference between yield and loot,"
he
was describing one of the most long standing tendencies of their way of life. Ecological abundance
and economic prodigality went hand in hand: the people of plenty were a people of waste.
Linnaeus and the middle way
The 18th century was a period when an attempt was made to adopt an objective attitude
to the
natural world. This was part of the legacy of the scientific revolution which sought to classify and
analyse nature in order to gain greater mastery over it. Linnaeus and his fellow naturalists stand in
an imperial tradition amongst the forerunners of ecology. In his widely influential essay 'The
Oeconomy of Nature' (1749), Linnaeus sought to discover the hand of God in nature. In the
process, he presented an extremely static portrait of its interactions, bound together by the chains
of sustenance, in which the human species occupies a special place of honour: 'All these
treasures of nature . . . seem intended by the Creator for the sake of man. Everything may be
made subservient to his use.' It was man's prerogative to improve nature's economy to enrich the
human economy, by eliminating the undesirable and multiplying the useful. In this respect,
Linnaeus was chosen by the King of Sweden to carry out a survey of his country's natural
resources, as a prelude to economic expansion.
However, this was initiated at a time of transition when Linnaeus and others in botany
began to
classify plants, not in terms of moral status or usefulness, but according to their intrinsic qualities
and structures. This was quite new. Indeed, Linnaeus is said to have fallen on his knees to give
thanks when he first saw gorse in England - a hated enemy of the agricultural improvers.