Francis Bacon, Research Paper Example

The academic literature addressing Francis Bacon has emphasized his contribution to a radically secular form of thought that is symmetrical to the general spirit of the Enlightenment, according to the thinker’s commitment to a natural philosophy that consists of a logical method dominated by empiricism. In this regard, Bacon’s project can be understood as a clarification of the form and content of philosophical logic through a delimitation of what is constitutive of rigorous, scientific thought.

The fundamental formal shift at stake in Bacon’s account of how philosophy should think is his emphasis on an inductive as opposed to a deductive style of logic. This decision at the heart of Bacon’s account can be viewed as symptomatic of his secularism and his opposition to religiously influenced forms of thought. Religious forms of thought are inclined to deductive logic, as demonstrated in the centrality of God to their schemas. For example, the deductive logic begins from a universal God, which then can be used to posit particulars, such as the essence of man or a tree. Bacon’s argument for an inductive reasoning can be understood as a rejection of such an approach. It is the assumption of the universal (or the general) as the beginning steps of a philosophical approach that betrays any rigour to philosophy, as this general or universal has no ground in empirical data. In contrast, inductive logic begins from a natural perspective, from an empirically apprehended particular. Such a formal innovation, as evidenced in Bacon’s text Novum Organum, bears a profound influence on the scientific method. Sensory experience becomes central to inductive logic, as the rules governing epistemology must be grounded in something that is not the product of an abstraction, thus making it susceptible to error. Such a beginning point as grounded in the supposed “real” of human experience can thereinafter be extrapolated into greater claims concerning nature as a whole, according to the creation of axioms from such particulars. Again, the opposition to the deductive forms of thought is clear: for Bacon it is precisely the particular as opposed to the general that can be grasped by the human intellect. According to this claim, we can therefore state that Bacon’s logic operates according to a precise order, in which generalities must be abstracted from particularities. What is crucial to Bacon’s account is the hypothesis that the particulars that become known through empirical sense data – and the tenets of empiricism itself – are suitable foundations for epistemology and philosophy as a whole.

Bacon’s general commitment to induction is reflected in his thoughts on language. As Umberto Eco notes, what is central to Bacon’s notes on language is the desired elimination of what he termed the idola, a series of misperceptions that are produced from a natural use of language. In essence, such idola hinder the rigorous possibility of human thought as they obscure the empirically generated particulars that are crucial to inductive reasoning. The idola can function either as complete misrepresentations of phenomena, or the idola can confer existence to that which does not exist, a variant of what is known as the fallacy of hypostatization or reification. The scientific possibilities of language thus intimate, as Eco notes, a certain commitment to the idea of a perfect language, in which perfect here would denote a language free of idola and conducive to the rigor of inductive logic. At the same time, the fact that there are phenomena such as idola suggests that the manner in which language relates to empiricism is in some way dissonant, because language in certain instances can be said to corrupt the phenomena of empirical perception, essentially misapprehending them, which thus leads to error.

The radicality of Bacon’s account can immediately be gauged in terms of a comparison to how Hume conceives of the relation between language and empiricism. In contrast to Bacon, for Hume the crucial concept in his account of the relation of language and resemblance may be identified as resemblance, to the extent that, for example, a word in language resembles a phenomenon that has been empirically perceived. Therefore, the origin of this word can in essence be viewed as empirically legitimate to the extent that it resembles the empirical. For Bacon, such an account omits the dissimulative nature of the idola and the potential for language to misrepresent the empirical, thereby hindering the possibilities of inductive logic.

What Bacon criticizes as the idola can be understood as being further rigorously formulated in the semiotic theory of Charles Peirce. Within Peirce’s theory what is also crucial to the notion of language and the signs that make up language is the role of the interpreter. Peirce specifies that when thinking about the sign, the interpreter cannot be forgotten, as it is the interpreter who essentially gives meaning to the sign itself. In this regard, for Pierce, what is central to the thought processes involved in logic is the interpreter him or herself. Whereas Bacon can be read as understanding the interpreter as interfering with the pure empirical grasping of an object, thus leading to the formation of notions such as the idola, Peirce’s schematic takes into account the importance of the interpreter’s contribution to logic itself. Accordingly, logic essentially becomes pragmatic, to the extent that the reason for the existence of such signs is tied to practical decisions related to human existence. In other words, the apparent empirical misinterpretation involved in language that Bacon criticizes, demonstrates for Peirce the practical grounds of human epistemology. To separate the interpreter from the notion of the sign would essentially be to overlook the existential, pragmatic and ontological nature of the sign, and therefore logic.