"The test of experience": The Philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon

We'll get a bit philosophical today and look at the English language's greatest influence on the scientific revolution: politician, philosopher, and scientist Sir Francis Bacon.  His Essays and "The Four Idols" from Novum Organon are our focus.

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• 9:53 (Cont.) "The test of experience": The Philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon

Transcript

Hello, everybody!  This is the Classic English Literature Podcast.  Today, we’re returning to our proper place in the literary timeline after a couple of little detours down the primrose path of dalliance.  We’re back in Stuart England after reviving Hamlet and dodging a Viking raid and I think we’ve earned a contemplative episode.  A bit more philosophical than we’ve gotten in a little while.  Today, we’re going to look at the work of Francis Bacon – no, not the painter with a thing for shrieking popes – but the philosopher and scientist.

To begin this discussion, let me ask you a question.  It’s a real basic question.  Real basic.  You ready?  OK: how do you know that you know something?  This is the fundamental question in a major field of philosophy called epistemology, which is the study of knowledge, or of knowing.  How do you know that you know something?  Like, first, how do we know at all?  What does that even mean?  And then, how can we be confident that the things we claim to know are true?  How can we tell that what we think of as knowledge isn’t just belief?  Plato, in his dialogue Theaetetus, famously defines knowledge as “justified true belief.”  So, let’s break this down.  In order to know something, three criteria must be met:

1. Belief: The individual must believe the proposition or statement in question. For instance, if someone claims to know that it will rain tomorrow, they must genuinely believe that it will rain.
2. Truth: The belief must be true. If it does not correspond to reality (e.g., it doesn't rain as believed), then the knowledge claim is false.
3. Justification: The individual must have justification for their belief. This means there should be good reasons or evidence supporting their belief, making it reasonable to hold that belief.

It’s this third one that trips us up, isn’t it?  What counts as justifying a belief?  Well, historically, there have been three big justifications.  The first one is revelation; that is, a belief is justified as knowledge because a god has revealed it to be so.  OK, no offense to any of my religious listeners, but I’m not going to dwell on this today, because it seems to me a tautology; you need another belief to justify the first belief.  Moving on, then.  

The second justification has been what we can broadly call rationalism.  This can be a slippery term, but what I mean by it here is logically reasoning from a given proposition to a new conclusion without any need to rely on sense experience to validate the new knowledge.  Maybe the most widely known rationalist thinker to the general public is 17th century French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes, who famously suspended his belief in everything – everything – that could be doubted on any level.  He even doubted that this was his own body because he could be hallucinating or an evil demon might be deceiving him.  The only thing he could not doubt was that he was doubting and that meant there had to exist a thing that doubted and therefore he could be sure of his own existence.  From this premise, he proceeds to rebuild his knowledge of the world on similarly rationalistic principles.   We’ll come back to Cartesian thinking later.

Finally, the third justification we’ll call, because this is its name, empiricism.  Empiricism posits that all knowledge begins in sense experience of the world around us.  We make observations, collect data, run experiments.  From those sensations, we can inductively reason to some new conclusions about the world.  It’s kind of the opposite of rationalism, which is suspicious of sensory experience.  Empiricism is skeptical that logic alone can be trusted without reference to concrete experiences.  It’s this kind of thinking that Francis Bacon urges us to embrace.

All right, so let’s talk about Francis Bacon, one of the most brilliant minds of the Elizabethan age—lawyer, philosopher, statesman, scientist, and the guy who basically said, “You know what? Let’s actually test things before we decide they’re true.”

He was born in 1561, a well-connected kid, because his dad was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (barking seal) and his mom was a highly educated, slightly terrifying woman who made sure Francis was reading Latin and Greek by the time most of us were figuring out which shoe goes on which foot.

The young prodigy caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth, who fondly called him “the young lord keeper,” but she never came through with the advancement he craved. Under King James, things started picking up. He rose to become Attorney General and eventually Lord Chancellor, one of the most powerful legal positions in England. But as much as Bacon was into politics, his true love was science and philosophy. He basically invented the scientific method—or at least popularized it—and his work Novum Organum – which is the most famous part of a larger work published in 1620 called the Instaurationis Magna (the Great Instauration, instauration meaning restoring or renewing something)  –  Novum Organum argued that humans should use observation and experimentation to figure out how the world works, rather than relying on old, dusty books that build logical arguments from divinely revealed premises.  The full title of Novum Organum is Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de Interpretatione Naturae: New organon, or true directions concerning the interpretation of nature. Quite a bold claim in that subtitle, but basically it’s his method that has given us our understanding of what constitutes true knowledge. 

In the preface to Novum Organum, Bacon sets out to challenge, basically, the Aristotelian biases of his day.  In fact, Bacon’s title directly rips Aristotle’s work Organum, the Greek’s treatise on logic and syllogism.  Bacon argues that such logical analysis is a faulty method of attaining true knowledge and that it should be replaced by empirical observation.  In that preface, he writes:

They who have presumed to dogmatize on Nature, as on some well-investigated subject, either from self-conceit or arrogance, and in the professorial style, have inflicted the greatest injury on philosophy and learning. For they have tended to stifle and interrupt inquiry exactly in proportion as they have prevailed in bringing others to their opinion: and their own activity has not counterbalanced the mischief they have occasioned by corrupting and destroying that of others.  They again who have entered upon a contrary course, and asserted that nothing whatever can be known, whether they have fallen into this opinion from their hatred of the ancient sophists, or from the hesitation of their minds, or from an exuberance of learning, have certainly adduced reasons for it which are by no means contemptible. 

The mischief Bacon chides here are some of the most famous doctrines of Western history, doctrines based on sound logical reasoning, but utterly incorrect in reality.  For instance, the circular orbit of the planets put forward by Plato and Aristotle, or the theory of spontaneous generation: you know, that flies just instantly popped out of rotting meat.  Or vitalism, the belief that living things have a non-material “life force” that animates them.  What about the medieval theory of the four humors which we talked about in the Ben Jonson episodes, or the Divine Right of Kings that we talked about in the episode on English translations of the Bible?  All of these scientific and political theories are perfectly reasonable, but they’re also perfectly wrong.  And they’re wrong because, while the conclusion may flow logically from the premises, they have no correspondence to actual physical reality.  But so long as we honor the arguments of long dead authorities like Plato and Aristotle and the Church Fathers, we remain ignorant of the world as it truly is. 

In an ironically Aristotelian way, Bacon advocates a “more prudent mean, between the arrogance of dogmatism, and the despair of skepticism,” and that is to put everything “to the test of experience.”

What Bacon’s advocating for here is called inductive reasoning, which is basically just the art of figuring things out by observing the world and drawing conclusions from it. And if you’re thinking, “That sounds pretty obvious,” you’re right! But back in the day, this was revolutionary stuff.

Here’s the gist: Inductive reasoning starts with specific observations and works its way up to a general theory. You see something happen a few times, then say, “Hey, maybe this is a rule.” Imagine you’ve eaten a hundred tacos and they were all delicious. So, you start thinking, “All tacos must be delicious!” Boom—inductive reasoning in action.

Now, here’s the twist: You can’t be 100% sure that the next taco you eat won’t taste like hot tuna in a dirty diaper, but based on all the tacos you’ve eaten, it’s a pretty solid guess. This is how the scientific method works, too. You run experiments, gather data, and from that data, you build up theories about how stuff works.  So, inductive reasoning isn’t foolproof—it’s not a crystal ball. But it’s a pretty good way to take a bunch of facts and turn them into something useful.  And use is what Bacon is after.

In his essay “Of Studies,” Bacon opens arguing that “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability” and he defines ability as “the judgement and disposition of business,” that is, getting things done.  He says, “Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them.”  By the way, you’ll notice as you read Bacon that he is a great lover of what writers call “parallel structure,” the repetition of a specific grammatical form or pattern within a sentence or across sentences. So, if I gave you more opening sentences to the essay, you’ll see how they parallel each other:

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business (dot dot dot) To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. 

It’s like giving your writing a rhythm by making sure that similar parts of a sentence are balanced and flow together nicely. When elements in a series or list have the same structure, the writing feels more cohesive and easier to read.  But note how he tweaks the ending of the last sentence in that excerpt.  One studies, he says, for delight, ornament, and ability.  But too much delight leads to sloth and laziness, too much ornament leads to affectation, people thinking you’re a witless show-off, and too much ability and judgment – that is to be a true scholar, to possess true knowledge.  The shift from negative outcomes to the supremely positive one is a neat rhetorical trick because it snaps the reader’s attention to the final climactic point.

Nor does Bacon have any time for relativists, people who believe that everything depends on some kind of context or that everything is up for interpretation.  In the essay, “Of Truth,” he opens with an allusion to Pontius Pilate: ‘"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’  I just want to say that there is something so perfect, so elegant, in this opening line.  The essay broadly examines the idea of lying to others, and to ourselves, and what it is about human nature that makes us do so.  But to explore this, Bacon has to dispense with the relativists who say that there really isn’t any truth, and he does so by making Pilate, after his famous question to Jesus Christ, turn on his heel and leave before the Son of God can tell him.  Arrogantly ignorant.  Doesn’t know, doesn't want to know, doesn't even know that he doesn’t know.  What a buffoon!  Who wants to be like Pilate?  The essay’s next sentence likens PIlate to the Greek Sophists, philosophers-for-hire who would argue any position for the right price without regard for truth or right.  Bacon writes:

Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients.

Nice side-swap at Renaissance relativists and sophists, who even lack the pluck and verve of the OGs.  They’re in the same vein but are more bloodless.  Oh, touche, Francis, touche!

Now that the opposition has been dealt with, Bacon carries on his argument.  And that argument is, curiously, that lying is a pleasure!  Wait a minute, Frank!  I thought we were on the eternal quest for true knowledge guided by the flaming pillars of experience and induction!  What do you mean that lying is fun, even fundamentally human?!

Explain what you mean by this, Frank, huh?  What’s this mean?

Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? 

OK, I kind of buy the “imaginations as one would” – after all, poetry and fiction are in some sense lies.  That’s why Plato hated poets.  But then he also hated sleeping, drinking, games, music, theater, and kittens, probably.  Ever notice how many of the great people of history would be dreadful if they weren’t dead?  Does a lot to moderate the personality, death.

What Bacon points out here is that such fleeting, transient, effervescent lies – what he calls the “shadow of a lie” – have no detrimental effect on the mind.  But he urges that “the inquiry of truth” is “the sovereign good of human nature.”  He offers a lovely analogy to clarify what may otherwise seem a contradictory, or at best paradoxical, point: the “mixture of falsehood is like allay in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.”  So a little fleeting lie mixed into the truth may be more expedient or entertaining, but, like mixing a base metal with precious one, the quality of truth is debased.

pause

The inquiry of truth so apotheosized by Bacon is often thwarted by what he calls the “Idols of the Mind” – and this is perhaps the most generally known section from the Novum Organon.  Idols here are false notions or obstacles to clear observation and induction.  He says:

 The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein, not only so beset men’s minds that truth can hardly find entrance, but even after entrance is obtained, they will again in the very instauration of the sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being forewarned of the danger fortify themselves as far as may be against their assaults.

He identifies four classes of the idols and explains their insalubrious effect.  These are the Idols of the Tribe, the Idols of the Cave, the Idols of the Theater, and the Idols of the Marketplace.  Let’s have a look at each of these.

First up, the Idols of the Tribe. These are the universal flaws baked into the human brain, the kind of errors we all make because, well, we’re human. Bacon admitted that our senses deceive us, and we have this nasty habit of thinking the world is more orderly and rational than it actually is. We might call this today confirmation bias, or the availability heuristic, or apophenia, which is the human tendency to see patterns in random events of objects.  Conspiracy theories thrive on this kind of stuff. Basically, we see what we want to see, and that leads us down the wrong path.  Think about social media algorithms. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube use algorithms to show users content they’re more likely to engage with, often reinforcing their existing beliefs. This leads to echo chambers, where people primarily encounter information that supports their views. For instance, during political campaigns or controversial news events, people often only see content that aligns with their prior beliefs. This reinforces shared biases and makes it harder to see things from an opposing or neutral perspective, distorting collective understanding of complex issues.  This is an "Idol of the Tribe" because it reflects a collective tendency to interpret the world in ways that affirm our preconceptions, rather than seeking objective or conflicting evidence.

Next, the Idols of the Cave. These are the individual biases that come from our personal experiences, education, and temperament. Think of Plato’s cave where the prisoners only saw shadows of reality—except in Bacon’s version, each of us is stuck in our own cave, shaped by our unique perspective on the world. He says, 

For everyone . . . has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. 

If you’re raised to think all dogs are dangerous, for example, you’re going to jump to conclusions every time you hear a bark. It’s personal, subjective, and a total block to seeing things clearly.  Have you ever had a conversation with someone whose views or opinions are just way, way off base, like someone who believes the world is flat?  And have you noticed that no matter how cogent your argument, no matter how many facts and data and sources you present to the guy, he still just refuses to believe that the world is round? That’s the Idol of the Cave.  Or take someone skeptical of climate change, perhaps due to cultural or regional factors (such as working in industries dependent on fossil fuels).  They might personally downplay scientific evidence supporting the argument that humans affect climate change. Their "cave" is shaped by their specific experiences, leading them to interpret data through a lens that differs from someone raised in a different environment.  Even when presented with the same scientific facts, people’s personal experiences heavily influence how they interpret and accept that information. The "Idols of the Cave" illustrate how personal circumstances can skew one’s view of reality, even in the face of clear evidence.

Third, the Idols of the Marketplace.  This is the one I think about the most, because it's about language. Language is a trickier beast than a bridge-dealing bulldog.  This category deals with how sloppy language messes with our thoughts, and he calls this a problem of the marketplace because that is where people go to metaphorically exchange ideas: 

For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. 

We get tangled up in words, often thinking they represent real, solid concepts when sometimes they’re just social noise or half-baked ideas that sound more important than they really are.  We might think about jargon from particular industries or fields of study, language intended to impress or dazzle or exclude the non-insider.  Or we might think of semantic broadening, or what I call “term creep” – the phenomenon whereby a word used to mean something very specific in the past, but its meaning has expanded to cover almost any similar situation.  I’ve noticed that lately the word “empathy” – which means vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another – has largely replaced the word “sympathy” – feeling sincere concern for someone experiencing something difficult or painful.  Or take, for instance, the word “genocide.”  It used to mean a conscious and planned effort for the extermination of an entire people – the Holocaust is of course the textbook example.  But in the last couple of years, it has been more loosely applied to any conflict involving a racial or ethnic clash.  Now, semantic broadening is a quite natural linguistic phenomenon, and I fully accept, and even sometimes relish, the organic quality of language.  It is, after all, the possession of the community which uses it, not the provenance of prescriptive lexicographers.  But I also recognize that if we water down our terms, how can we meaningfully deal with matters of degree and scale when confronting the challenges of existence?

The same thing goes for euphemisms: you know, language that softens so as not to shock or offend. Sure, there’s no big deal calling it the rest room instead of the shitter, it’s just more polite.  But what about language that obscures the reality of a condition?  I’ve recently heard the term “food insecure” used to describe people who don’t have enough to eat.  But a newscaster saying there are “hundreds of families with food insecurity” doesn’t prompt in me the same humanitarian response that “hundreds of families are starving” does.  Y’know?

A deeper issue with the Idols of the Marketplace is that terms we use for a specific issue or idea might differ depending on our attitude toward that issue:  is it euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide?  Is abortion an issue of bodily autonomy or infant murder?  Why are they freedom fighters if we like them but terrorists if we don’t?  How can we clearly debate issues if we use different subjective terms to investigate an objective reality?

On a lighter note, people’s heads exploded about a dozen years ago when Merriam-Webster’s dictionary offered a definition of the word “literally” meaning “in effect; virtually.”  Oh, ho!  People cried, “We’ve reached the end times!  There are no standards anymore!  Up is down and words have no meaning!”  OK, folks, loosen your collar.  World’s not ending.  In fact, we have instances of the figurative use of “literally” going back to 1769.  Even Charles Dickens uses it this way in his 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby.  It’s an example of what are called contranyms, words that are their own opposites, their own antonyms.  Think about words like “cleave”: to cling together or to break apart.  Sanction: to approve or to penalize.  Peruse: to study carefully or to skim quickly.  Things like context and tone and body language clarify these usages in real life, so there’s no need to get your wicket sticky.  

And let’s not even get started on the uproar and consternation occasioned by the recent reintroduction of the singular pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their.”  Fear not, the sun shall rise tomorrow.

Anyway, I seem to have rabbit-holed this conversation.  Started talking about Idols of the Marketplace and found myself babbling about Janus-words.  I just find these problems really interesting because I tend to believe that language plays a very active role in constructing the reality in which we live, and if language does not or can not describe reality, but can only describe metaphors for reality, then we are forever caught in an epistemological pickle.

Finally, the Idols of the Theatre. Bacon saved the most dramatic one for last (rimshot effect). These are the dogmas and philosophies we've inherited that shape how we see the world, kind of like being trapped in someone else’s poorly written play. Whether it’s religion, political ideology, or some outdated scientific theory, these "theatrical" systems of thought keep us from thinking critically. Bacon wasn’t a fan of people who blindly accepted received wisdom—he was all about clearing the stage and looking at the evidence fresh.

Bacon hoped that by revealing and identifying these idols of the mind, these hindrances to clear thinking could be avoided by a new generation who could reconstruct knowledge as a useful explanation of Nature.  Bacon’s institution of a scientific method and an inductive philosophy continues to dominate our approach to knowledge to this day.  Right?  We are all Baconists in some way.  We believe in science.  Even if you are suspicious of the hegemony of modern science, or scientism, in its extreme form, and believe that there exists some knowledge that can only be learned through revelation or intuition or meditation, that science does not have the total monopoly on what can be true, almost all of us take an “I’ll believe when I see it” attitude.  You know, when I feel ill, I’m not looking to intuition to save me, right?  I want somebody in a white coat with a wall full of diplomas telling me what chemicals to take and in what quantities.  I want hard science when I’m sick.  I want hard science making cars safe to drive.  I want hard science making my food safe to eat.  Especially bacon.

pause

This episode has focused on Francis Bacon’s contributions to the scientific revolution and his philosophical work, but I would be remiss if I did not mention, at least in passing, that adherents of the “Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare” crankery have often put Bacon forward as the real writer of the sonnets and plays that we sheep believe Shakespeare wrote.  Allow me to say, “Baa, baa.” (sound effect)

Baconians point to Bacon’s appropriate social class and educational background for the production of such profound literature and argue that its nuanced understanding of human nature, political power, and ethics align more closely with Bacon’s known worldview and intellectual interests.  Some others note that Bacon was fascinated by ciphers and codes, which could account for the depth of meaning in the plays.  Finally, and here’s the clincher, sometimes Bacon wrote under a pseudonym: why couldn’t William Shakespeare be the pen name Bacon used for writing drama?

Why not indeed?  Because it’s absolute greasy rubbish, that’s why.  Mere coincidence and classist elitism do not a convincing argument make and, ironically, would certainly not withstand Bacon’s own criteria for true knowledge.  ‘Nuff said.

Thanks for listening, everyone.  I hope you enjoyed your time here.  If you did, could I ask you a big favor?  It’ll only take a second.  Could you please text one person and recommend the show?  Like, “Hi, I’ve just heard this show and I think you’d really like it.  Check it out and let me know what you think.”  That would really help to build our community.  Thanks for all your support, and I’ll talk to you next time.