The Friar and the Cipher (19 page)

His one major break was in the discipline that the earlier Bacon had called “the gate and key of knowledge.” In
Advancement of Learning
, mathematics was cataloged not under science but in “metaphysics,” a category that Francis Bacon dismissed as mere philosophy and not part of scientific inquiry. “Quantity,” which he considered the sole subject of mathematics (a much narrower definition than that found in the
Opus Majus
), was “abstract and separable from matter,” and anything that was abstract detracted from direct study of the physical world. “Mathematicians,” Bacon wrote, “would have their science [and logic] preside over physics,” instead of assuming the proper role as “handmaids to physics.” This lifelong prejudice against mathematics would prove to be one of the most controversial aspects of Bacon's scientific theories and, as experiments became more and more sophisticated, one of its greatest limitations.

Although none of Francis Bacon's proposals was put into practice, after the publication of
Advancement of Learning
the king was won over—whether by argument or flattery—and from there Bacon's rise was meteoric. He was named solicitor general in 1607, in 1613 finally became attorney general, three years later was appointed to the Privy Council, the following year granted his father's old job as lord keeper, then finally, the year after that, 1617, was appointed lord chancellor. His private fortunes improved as well. In 1606, despite his personal dislike of women and children and fondness for young men, he married a wealthy widow, Alice Barnham, guaranteeing himself an income of £220 per year. (He never had children, whom he had termed “hostages to fortune,” a fitting description from a man left penniless by his father.) In 1618, he was made Baron Verulam and then in 1621, Viscount St. Albans.

Francis Bacon pictured in a frontispiece of a 1640 edition of
Advancement of Learning
EDGAR FAHS SMITH COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARY

Bacon used his influence to try to advance his political agenda, which, in today's terms, would be called “engagement.” He believed that deft use of diplomacy and limited conciliation could overcome friction between the religions, the two houses of Parliament, and the disinclination of both Wales and Scotland to be part of a greater England. Although James ignored Bacon's advice as excessively radical, it had little effect on the esteem with which he was now held at court. When the king journeyed to Scotland, it was to Bacon that he left the responsibility of ruling England.

In 1620, at the height of his influence, Bacon announced plans for a great six-part encyclopedia, which he dubbed
Instauratio Magna,
or “The Great Renewal.” One part was to be
Advancement of Learning
. Another was his proposal for a revolutionary approach to science, to be entitled
Novum Organum
, a direct swipe at Aristotle's logical works, the
Organon
, which Bacon sought to replace and “begin the entire labor of the mind again.” In the preface to the
Instauratio
he wrote, “Francis of Verulam reasoned thus with himself, and judged it to be in the interest of the present and future generations that they should be made acquainted with his thoughts.”

But how much of what followed were his thoughts? Bacon is notorious for his unattributed “borrowings,” and in this work, even a casual observer can readily see shades of almost every scientific theorist who preceded him, but there is no one from whom Bacon pirated more and in such blatantly specific detail than his namesake. Roger Bacon is everywhere in Francis Bacon's scientific work—the idea for the encyclopedia itself is more than vaguely reminiscent the
Scriptum Principali
—but there is no more egregious example than in the
Novum Organum
.

Here, Roger Bacon's four causes of error, “obstacles to grasping truth,” have morphed into Francis Bacon's “four species of idols [that] beset the human mind.” Roger Bacon's four, it will be remembered, were “submission to faulty or unworthy authority; influence of custom; popular prejudice; and, concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.” The latter Bacon, never willing to miss an opportunity for florid prose, calls these “idols of the tribe,” “idols of the den,” “idols of the marketplace,” and “idols of the theater.”

“Idols of the tribe” are defined as distortions of perception inherent in human nature, that “all perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to the man and not the universe,” a concept that might easily be seen as popular prejudice. “Idols of the den” are those distortions of perception particular to each individual, acquired from his “education and intercourse with others, or from his reading and the authority acquired by those whom he reveres and admires.” It would be hard to get closer to submission to unworthy authority than that. “Idols of the market” are “formed by the reciprocal intercourse and society of man with man . . . from the commerce and association of men with each other.” In other words, popular prejudice.

Frontispiece of the
Instauratio Magna
showing a ship traveling between the Pillars of Hercules, believed to mark the end of the known world, an allusion to the new knowledge Bacon was bestowing upon the human race
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY

His fourth idol, that of the theater, came about through the perpetuation of “peculiar systems of philosophy and perverted rules of demonstration . . . creating fictitious or theatrical worlds.” Where Roger Bacon spoke of this error from the point of view of those who perpetrated it—his Dominican adversaries in particular—Francis Bacon discusses its effect on the listener.

As to the science itself, in order to “begin the entire labor of the mind again,” Bacon began by throwing out both Aristotle and his deductive method. There was no greater source of corruption of both science and human thought, he insisted, than the syllogism (all Aristotelian conclusions are correct; that the universe is eternal is an Aristotelian conclusion; therefore the universe is eternal). Hypothesis—assumption—the essence of propositions in a syllogism, cannot be a means to truth, since the very process of making an assumption limits and may misdirect any conclusions that might be drawn from it. He denounced scholastics as prime culprits in deductive miscreancy—“the corruption of philosophy by the mixing of it up with superstition and theology,” as he put it.

The answer, Bacon proposed, was to abandon deduction in favor of induction—the slow road to knowledge of general principles from pieces of verifiable evidence. Francis Bacon is so renowned for his furious criticism of Aristotle and championing of induction that he is often referred to as the inventor of the inductive method. The only problem, of course, is that the Philosopher himself in his work on the theory of knowledge,
Posterior Analytics
, specifically mentioned induction as one of the two methods of acquiring knowledge. Bacon acknowledged that Aristotle occasionally presented a perverted form of induction but claimed that “true induction”—Baconian induction—was similar in name only. A scientific record “compiled on its own account [Aristotle's
On Animals
, for example],” he wrote, “and one collected for the mind's information as a foundation for philosophy [his own method] are two different things.”

Bacon's new and original recipe for induction, which relied heavily on Roger Bacon's
Scientia Experimentalis,
was perhaps the most rigorous and elegant blueprint for scientific inquiry ever devised. His aim was to create what he called a “natural history” for phenomena in the observable and measurable world through a series of observations. Natural histories could be created not just for living creatures or rocks but also for events such as heat, light, or astronomical motion. The observations he proposed were not to be random, but controlled, measured, and then recorded—in other words, experiments. “The secrets of nature betray themselves more readily when tormented by art [experiment] than when left to their own course,” he wrote. Progress toward general truth could occur only when “numerous experiments shall be received and collected.” In an insight that has become the basis of modern theoretical physics, Bacon noted that the principal value of experiment was its ability to disprove a spurious theory, not to confirm a truth previously held.

But not all experiments advanced truth. Bacon separated those experiments that merely had some utility to society—or could result in a profit—from those that moved science closer to a general truth. Also, the scientist must not “jump and fly from particulars to remote and most general axioms,” but rather move slowly, from one small intermediate step to another, forming tentative axioms—working hypotheses—only when the weight of experiment allowed. Only then would he begin to approach an understanding of the general, the “rule.”

Again like Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon insisted that science be studied in order to be used. The goal of science was invention. He noted that three inventions in particular, the printing press, gunpowder, and the magnet, had “changed the whole face and state of things around the world.” Science like education would create a stronger, happier, more patriotic, and even a more pious culture.

In addition to shunning mathematics, Baconian science had some other obvious drawbacks. Although he might have been correct in distrusting hypothesis and deduction, he was unable to dispense with either. In both the delineation of areas of study in
Advancement of Learning
and the experimental method in
Novum Organum
, Bacon employed the same complex system of classification and subclassification for which he denounced Aristotle and relied just as much on assumption. For all the verbiage, there was little difference between them. What, after all, is the classification of mathematics as a branch of metaphysics except an extension of his assumption that abstract thought is inherently unscientific? Also, Bacon needed hypothesis to resolve conflicting experimental results.

All of this bothered him not at all. “The die is cast,” he wrote, “the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity—I care not which; it may wait a century for a reader, as God has waited 6000 years for an observer.”

Bacon did not have to wait nearly that long for yet another reversal of fortune. In 1621, disaster struck once more. In his legal affairs, Bacon had been a productive, highly competent judge, noted for his lucid, incisive verdicts and his industry in clearing huge court backlogs. But the preeminent position at court that he had so assiduously pursued became his undoing. During a dispute between Parliament and the king, Bacon became the perfect surrogate to attack. Led by his old nemesis, Edward Coke, Bacon was accused of taking bribes on the bench. Accepting money from participants in a trial was about as uncommon as gambling in Rick's Café, but James's enemies demanded action all the same. Bacon, while freely admitting that he had taken money, pointed out that in the two cases at issue he had ruled against the gift givers.

Nonetheless, James was forced to remove Bacon from all his official posts, fine him £40,000 (which was never paid), and sentence Bacon to the Tower (in which he spent only three days). Professionally, Bacon was ruined, and his reputation has never recovered. He retired from the public sphere and spent the last five years of his remarkable life engrossed in his studies.

Francis Bacon died totally in character. During a carriage ride in the country on a frosty day in early April 1626, he looked out to the roadside and it occurred to him to conduct an experiment. To try to determine if snow could be as effective a preservative as salt, he stopped to buy a fowl, had it killed, then stuffed it with the snow to see if and for how long it could prevent the bird's flesh from rotting. The bird was preserved, but not Bacon. He caught a chill and was brought to the home of a friend, Lord Arundel (who was imprisoned in the Tower at the time for a marital indiscretion). Placed by the servants in a damp bed, he developed a fever, and a few days later on April 9, 1626, Francis Bacon died, probably of pneumonia. In his final letter, he wrote to thank Arundel for the hospitality of his house and to recount the circumstances of his illness. “As for the experiment itself,” he added, “it succeeded excellently well.”