Introduction: The Place of Natural History in Francis Bacon’s Philosophy

Authors: Sorana Corneanu, Guido Giglioni, Dana Jalobeanu
Source: Early Science and Medicine [Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, 2012, pp. 1-10(10)]

Article source: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/esm/2012/00000017/F0020001/art00001

Francis Bacon and the Classification of Natural History

Author: Peter Anstey (University of Otago)
Source: Early Science and Medicine [Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, 2012, pp. 11-31(21)]

This paper analyses the place of natural history within Bacon’s divisions of the sciences in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the later De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623). It is shown that at various points in Bacon’s divisions, natural history converges or overlaps with natural philosophy, and that, for Bacon, natural history and natural philosophy are not discrete disciplines. Furthermore, it is argued that Bacon’s distinction between operative and speculative natural philosophy and the place of natural history within this distinction, are discontinuous with the later distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy that emerged in the methodology of the Fellows of the early Royal Society.

Article source: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/esm/2012/00000017/F0020001/art00002

Francis Bacon’s Natural History and Civil History: A Comparative Survey

Author: Silvia Manzo (Universidad Nacional de La Plata—CONICET)
Source: Early Science and Medicine [Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, 2012, pp. 32-61(30)]

The aim of this paper is to offer a comparative survey of Bacon’s theory and practice of natural history and of civil history, particularly centered on their relationship to natural philosophy and human philosophy. I will try to show that the obvious differences concerning their subject matter encompass a number of less obvious methodological and philosophical assumptions which reveal a significant practical and con ceptual convergence of the two fields. Causes or axioms are prescribed as the theoretical end-products of natural history, whereas precepts are envisaged as the speculative outcomes derived from perfect civil history. In spite of this difference, causes and precepts are thought to enable effective action in order to change the state of nature and of man, respectively. For that reason a number of common patterns are to be found in Bacon’s theory and practice of natural and civil history.

Article source: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/esm/2012/00000017/F0020001/art00003

Historia and Materia: The Philosophical Implications of Francis Bacon’s Natural History

Author: Guido Giglioni (The Warburg Institute, University of London)
Source: Early Science and Medicine [Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, 2012, pp. 62-86(25)]

This article examines the philosophical implications underlying Bacon’s views on historical knowledge, paying special attention to that variety of historical knowledge described by Bacon as “natural.“ More specifically, this article explores the interplay of history (historia) and fable (fabula). In the sphere of thought, fabula is the equivalent to materia in nature. Both are described by Bacon as being “versatile“ and “pliant.“ In Bacon’s system of knowledge, philosophy, as the domain of reason, starts from historiae and fabulae, once memory and the imagination have fulfilled their cognitive tasks. This means that, for Bacon, there is no such thing as a pure use of reason. He advocates a kind of reason that, precisely because it is involved with matter’s inner motions (its “appetites,“ in Bacon’s characteristic language), is constitutively ‘impure’. The article shows how the terms historia and fabula cover key semantic areas in defining Bacon’s philosophy: historia may mean “history“ as well as “story,“ fabula “myth“ as well “story.“ In both cases, we can see significant oscillations from a stronger meaning (close to those of matter and nature) to a weaker one (connected to wit and imagination), as if the power of nature decreases moving from histories and myths to stories. On the other hand, there are cases in which Bacon seems to stick to a diachronic view of the meaning of fables and histories, such that the transition from myths to history, especially natural history, is described as a collective effort towards reality and enlightenment.

Article source: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/esm/2012/00000017/F0020001/art00004

Res, veluti per Machinas, Conficiatur: Natural History and the ‘Mechanical’ Reform of Natural Philosophy

Author: Ian G. Stewart (University of King’s College)
Source: Early Science and Medicine [Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, 2012, pp. 87-111(25)]

This paper revisits Bacon’s persistent ‘mechanical’ imagery by which he described the ‘aid’ through which the human mind would be rendered adequate to framing axioms about nature’s processes and properties that underlie all natural phenomena. It argues that the role Bacon ascribed to his own insights into the properties and motions of matter is crucial for grasping such instrumental imagery, because his own writings—both methodological and natural historical—need to be read as themselves comprising, at least in incipient form, the very instruments of which they speak. From that reflexive standpoint, this paper in particular focuses on the ‘aid’ to the senses that his natural histories were to have offered under the interpretative guidance offered by the Novum organum and other works. The ‘hypothetical’ status to which Bacon is often thought to have accorded his own natural philosophical insights does not adequately take into account the transformative power Bacon thought these insights should have through his own writings. The fact that Bacon was keenly sensitive to the psychological effects of textual authority in his intellectual milieu prompts new reflection concerning how he intended his own texts to be read, and how we should read them.

Article source: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/esm/2012/00000017/F0020001/art00005