Bacon, The Great Instauration

Question 1

When is Bacon alive

Answer 1

1561-1626

Question 2

Bacon: Talk about the title “The Great Instauration”

Answer 2

Means “restoration”

Bacon planned his Great Instauration in imitation of the Divine Work – the Work of the Six Days of Creation, as defined in the Bible, leading to the Seventh Day of Rest or Sabbath in which Adam’s dominion over creation would be restored,[1][page needed] thus dividing the great reformation in six parts:

Partitions of the Sciences (De Augmentis Scientiarum)
New Method (Novum Organum)
Natural History (Historia Naturalis)
Ladder of the Intellect (Scala Intellectus)
Anticipations of the 2nd Philosophy (Anticipationes Philosophiæ Secunda)
The Second Philosophy or Active Science (Philosophia Secunda aut Scientia Activæ)

Question 3

When is the Great Instauration published?

Answer 3

1620

Question 4

Instauration: Bacon, allegory, and the rise of the novel

Answer 4

• First line: “…all trial should be made, whether that commerce between the mind of man and the nature of things, . . . might by any means be restored to its perfect and original condition”
• Allegory: alle=other; agora=marketplace; fitting use of commerce between the mind of man and nature, in that this is typically what allegory is supposed to establish. But in allegory up to that time, religion was the primary keeper of allegorical keys–religion provided the index for exchanges between the fallen world of appearances and the exalted spheres. Bacon wants nature to reveal its own wares in this commerce–wants direct access to nature–thus we move into a long period of seeking meaning from the things of nature in themselves. NICHOLAS HALMI argues that going into the 18th c more and more people are awakening to the fact that nature seems to be infinitely analyzable (my addition: the vastness of the universe already being explored in earlier works like Fontanelle’s Conversations, but in the 18th century you have little unexpected factors like the calculus and the idea of what Berkeley derisively calls the “infinitely little,” i.e. infinitesimal). Nature tantalized Bacon and the Royal Society with the promise of a regained center, and subsequent efforts showed that the center might be deferred indefinitely.

Question 5

Instauration: what is Bacon’s project? What is the renewal?

Answer 5

• “There [is] but one course left, therefore,–to try the whole thing [i.e. understanding nature] anew upon a better plan, and to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations.”

Question 6

Instauration: talk about Bacon’s tone; gender; ideology

Answer 6

-Nature is female. He alternates between adoring her and wanting to woo her into revealing herself to him, and essentially forcing her: “I do not propose merely to survey these regions in my mind, like an augur taking auspices, but to enter them like a general who means to take possession.”

Question 7

Instauration: language, Adam & Eve, naming

Answer 7

• Language a key disruptor in the deductive reasoning he disdains—“The syllogism consists of propositions; propositions of words; and words are the tokens and signs of notions . . . [which can be] abstracted from facts, vague, not sufficiently definite”
  o Looks forward to similar ideas about language in Locke and Hume, who both inherit Bacon’s empirical mindset, and into Saussure and 20th century linguistics.

Question 8

Instauration: relationship to James

Answer 8

Compares KJ to Solomon; appeals to James’s interest in gaining knowledge

Question 9

Instauration: talking point, Aristotle

Answer 9

• The plan of the work starts with the divisions of the sciences and then what Bacon calls “the New Organon; or Directions concerning the Interpretation of Nature.” Organon an instrument of thought or knowledge, but also the traditional title of Aristotle’s logical treatises—Bacon sees this project taking over Aristotle’s preeminent place in philosophy—which to a great extent it does.