Abstract
Bacon recognizes some important similarities between skepticism and his own philosophy, especially the skeptic’s emphasis on the weakness of our cognitive faculties and his suspension of judgment. But there is also a key difference: although both affirm the impossibility of knowledge, the skeptic claims that nothing can be known tout court, whereas Bacon contends that this is the case only as far as the traditional way of attaining knowledge is concerned. This essay examines the affinities and differences between Bacon’s philosophy and ancient skepticism, both Pyrrhonian and Academic, by focusing on a comparison between his doctrine of the idols and the arguments and themes found in the ancient and contemporary skeptical sources which he presumably read.
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Notes
- 1.
NO I, §126 (Sp I, 219; OFB 189). In quotations of NO, we first give the reference for Spedding, Ellis, and Heath’s edition (Bacon 1889), henceforth Sp (these references are to be read as Sp volume number, page number). We then give the reference for the Oxford Francis Bacon edition (Bacon 2004), whose translation we follow throughout, unless otherwise indicated. This edition is henceforth referred to as OFB. Novum Organum aphorisms will be referred to as volume number, § aphorism number (I, §126, in this case).
- 2.
Bacon’s text is published in the Spedding, Ellis, and Heath edition only in its original Latin version (Sp II, 687–9), and we were not able to find any translation into a modern language. In Sképsis, a Brazilian journal of philosophy devoted to skepticism, I have offered a translation into Portuguese (Bacon 2008).
- 3.
I follow Spedding’s translation for advertat.
- 4.
Some important interpreters of Bacon’s philosophy have commented on this topic, but only in passing. Jardine (1985), for example, detects an Academic skeptical tendency in the provisional status of Bacon’s judgments. More recently, however, some work has been done to re-evaluate Bacon’s relation to skepticism. See Oliveira (2002), Granada (2006), Eva (2006), Oliveira and Maia Neto (2008), and Manzo (2009).
- 5.
See Oliveira and Maia Neto (2008, pp. 249–73). According to these authors, Bacon’s work is “an important step in the transition from the Renaissance skepticism developed by Sánchez, Montaigne and Charron to the mitigated and constructive skepticism of Wilkins, Boyle and Glanvill” (2008, p. 247).
- 6.
“Note C – On some changes in Bacon’s treatment in his doctrine of Idols” (Sp I, 113–7).
- 7.
For more details, see Eva (2006).
- 8.
According to Van Leeuwen (1970, p. 7), Bacon’s “Doctrine of the Idols” is equally related to the criticism of non-critical dogmatism (represented by the idols of the theater) and radical skepticism (which, according to him, originates from the other three idols). In fact, as we will see, Bacon rejects excess in assenting as well as in refusing judgment, but Van Leeuwen misses the similarities existing between this doctrine and skepticism (such as, for example, Bacon’s criticisms of precipitation in generalizations, unjustified presuppositions, and defective logical procedures). Zagorin (2001, p. 386) maintains that Bacon “never attached much weight to the challenge of the sceptical philosophy and always maintained that knowledge could be firmly established and continuously enlarged.”
- 9.
According to Prior, all the skeptical modes can be found in Bacon’s idols, even though they lack the proper skeptical “deductions and conclusions” and are embodied in a new analysis (Prior 1968, p. 141).
- 10.
I do not therefore share Maia Neto and Oliveira’s thesis according to which “Bacon should not be placed in the company of those such as Descartes who tried to refute skepticism and establish a new certain science” (2008, p. 249), although I am in agreement for the most part with their analysis. As I try to show here, Bacon’s philosophical attitude towards skepticism cannot be properly described as a “refutation,” as in Descartes’ case. And I think that the quotations given at the start of this paper provide good evidence of Bacon’s much more welcoming attitude towards skepticism if they are compared with Descartes’ (cf. Popkin 2003, chapter 9–10). In any case, Bacon aimed to establish a new certain science and in both cases we could only speak, at best, of a “provisional skepticism,” even if this expression is not exact for their “skeptical” strategies and has quite different meanings for them.
- 11.
They are presented in NO I, §41, §§53–8.
- 12.
PH I, 87–8; II 22ff, 29–48.
- 13.
De Aug. V, iv (Sp I, 645; IV, 433).
- 14.
NO I, §52; Sp IV, 54. Cf. Adv. Log. I, 133.
- 15.
In the original, Bacon’s quotation says: “…homine scientias quaerere in minoribus mundis, et non in majore sive communi.” Richard Bett (2005) argued that Bacon’s usage of communi to translate the greek xunos suggests that the source here must be Sextus, inasmuch as the identification between xunos (public) with koinos (common) is a peculiar mark of the latter’s presentation of Heraclitus. Here is Bett’s translation of Sextus’ quotation of Heraclitus: “‘Therefore it is necessary to follow what is common’ (for ‘public’ is ‘common’). But though reason is public, most people live as if they had private insight” (Adv. Log. I, 133).
- 16.
Sextus offers arguments against the different criteria of truth advanced by dogmatic philosophers, among them Heraclitus’ criterion, in the same text from the first book of Adv. Log. from which this quotation is supposedly taken. According to Sextus, Heraclitus proposes “reason” as a criterion, meaning by that word not individual and varied reasons according to men, but common and divine reason, which all of us would share inasmuch as we are rational beings (see Adv. Log. I, 133ff). But Bacon’s criterion of truth is related to a methodical work through experience that would make us capable of knowing the true nature of things, and that we could hardly identify with any kind of rational activity present in human nature by itself, as we will see when we consider the idola tribus. Bacon’s quotation from Heraclitus points to the need for research in the “great world” which is common to men (the world whose nature he starts to reveal only from the second book of NO on). However, the distance between human understanding, in its present state, and the true knowledge of Nature is so radical as to give this remark the meaning of corroborating his criticism.
- 17.
Essais II, 12, 505, 506; cf. Popkin (2003, pp. 90ff, 103). References to Les Essais de Montaigne are made from the PUF edition, unless otherwise stated.
- 18.
Villey (1973, pp. 10–4); Essais I, 23, 111C.
- 19.
- 20.
According to him, while the literary criticism of the time mistakenly searched for influences in Bacon’s Essays (the name of which, however, was probably taken from Montaigne’s work, quoted in the chapter “On truth”), they are to be seen more clearly in the epistemological and methodological criticism of NO (Villey 1973, pp. 19ff, 47, 107).
- 21.
Villey recognizes that Montaigne’s influence on Bacon’s methodology corresponds to “what is usually called Montaigne’s skepticism” (1973, pp. 90, 105). Moreover, he suggests, on the basis of their criticism of the medical sciences, that Bacon probably included Montaigne among those “philosophers who declare themselves sceptics” (1973, p. 100). However, he did not go deeper by examining how his work could contribute to connect Bacon also with ancient skepticism.
- 22.
Essais II, 12, 504; cf. Academica (Acad.) II, iii.
- 23.
I here follow Screech’s translation (Montaigne 2003), as I will do in the other quotations from the Montaigne’s Essais.
- 24.
“The human understanding is swayed most by those things which can strike and enter the mind suddenly and in one go, things by which the fantasy has grown used to be filled and inflated; and then the mind fancies and supposes (thought it does not realize it) that everything else somehow behaves in the same way as those few things currently laying siege on it…” (NO I, §47; Sp I, 166; OFB 85).
- 25.
Essais II, 12, 570–1; II, 17, 656–7; I, 25, 136ff; I, 26, 160. Villey acknowledges the same parallel between Bacon and Montaigne (Villey 1973, pp. 91–2).
- 26.
In the final part of “On the resemblance of children and their parents” (Essais II, 37), Montaigne relates the diversity of the habits of different people concerning what is good or bad for one’s health to the fact that there is no more similarity between human opinions than there is between two hairs or two grains, since “their most universal quality is diversity” (Essais II, 37, 786A). See also Essais II, 12, 20, 466, 673.
- 27.
Bacon refers here to how, on the one hand, Greek atomists paid attention only to the “particulars,” without examination of the results of their connections, and on the other hand, other philosophers only pay attention to their compounds without being able to penetrate the simplicity of nature. Next, concluding this exposition, he claims that “speculative prudence” is necessary in order to banish the idols. “In general then anyone who contemplates the nature of the things should distrust whatever ravishes and possesses his intellect; and with such matters should be all the more careful to keep his intellect impartial and pure” (NO I, § 58; Sp I, 170; OFB 91–2).
- 28.
PH I, 12, 205; II, 251–3; III, 280–1. A similar remark is made by Montaigne, although in different terms, in Essais II, 12, 505.
- 29.
PH I, 12: “The main basic principle of the sceptics’ system is that of opposing to every proposition an equal proposition, for we believe that as a consequence of this we end by ceasing to dogmatize.”
- 30.
I think that these claims about the weakness of our faculties offer a strong reason for not enrolling Bacon’s position among the Aristotelian answers to the skeptical crisis, as Popkin does (Popkin 2003, p. 111).
- 31.
Acad. II, 79–82, cf. II, 19–21, 45. In the same sense, see PH I, 20.
- 32.
In another text, Montaigne describes men as ignorant of the “natural sickness of their mind, which does nothing but range and ferret about, ceaselessly twisting and contriving and, like our silkworms, becoming entangled in its own works: Mus in pice [a mouse stuck in pitch]. It thinks it can make out in the distance some appearance of light, of conceptual truth: but, while it is charging towards it, so many difficulties, so many obstacles and fresh diversions strew its path that they make it dizzy and it loses the way… There is no end for our enquiries, our end is in another world…” (III, 13, 1068B).
- 33.
“But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency and deception of the senses” (NO I, §50; Sp I, 168; OFB 86–7). See also Dist. Op., Sp I, 136; IV, 24.
- 34.
Villey (1973, p. 86); cf. NO I, §48; Essais III, 6 and III, 11.
- 35.
Cf. NO I, §45; Essais I, 48; II, 1.
- 36.
In 564–5A, for instance, he writes: “It is not only fevers, potions and great events which upset our judgment: the lightest thing can send it spinning… If apoplexy can dim and totally snuff out our mental vision, you can be sure that even a cold will confuse it. Consequently, there can hardly be found a single hour in an entire lifetime when our powers of judgment are settled in their proper place… Take a judge: however well-intentioned he may be, he must watch himself carefully (…) otherwise some inclination toward friend, relation, beauty, revenge (or even something far less weighty, such as that chance impulse which leads us to favor one thing rather than another, or which enables us to choose, without any sanction of reason, between two identical objects – or even some more shadowy cause, equally vain) will encourage some sneaking sympathy or hostility toward one of the parties to slip, unnoticed, into his judgment and tip the balance.” See also Villey (1973, p. 86), where he mentions other moral developments of the same idea in Essais I, 17; II, 38; III, 10, 13.
- 37.
The third example of idolum offered by Bacon in De Aug. is the one according to which man takes himself as the norm and the mirror of nature: “For it is not credible (if all particulars be gone through and noted) what a troop of fictions and Idols the reduction of the operations of the nature to the similitude of human actions has brought into natural philosophy; I mean, the fancy that nature acts as man does. Neither are much better than the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks, or the opinion of Epicurus answering to the same in heathenism, who supposed the gods to be of human shape. And therefore Velleius the Epicurean needed not to have asked, “Why God should have adorned the heaven with stars and lights, like an aedile?” For if that great workmaster had acted as an aedile, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful order, like the frets of the roofs of palaces; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square or triangle or straight line amongst such an infinite number. So differing a harmony is there between the spirit of man and the spirit of nature” (De Aug. V, iv, Sp I, 644–5; IV, 432–3). Bacon’s quotation from Cicero comes from DND I, 22.
- 38.
Villey (1973, p. 84). Villey mentions particularly Essais I, 11 (for the example on the prophecies quoted by Bacon); I, 32; III, 13 and again II, 12, 539.
- 39.
See notes 22 and 23 above.
- 40.
PH I, 20, 177, 186; II, 17, 21, 37; III, 280.
- 41.
Montaigne announces his criticism of the belief of the human race in reaching the truth as a too hasty evaluation of our powers in Essais II, 12, 448–9, and he very often returns to the theme.
- 42.
See Marcondes (2002).
- 43.
About the skeptical use of language, see PH I, 16, 182ff, 191, 195, 206–8.
- 44.
Villey (1973, pp. 93–4). As he observes, the three main problems considered by Bacon as related to the idola fori – namely, lack of sharpness of language, insolvable disputes arising from it, and the incapacity to remedy this problem by way of definitions – are equally present in Montaigne, especially in the Apology (see Essais II, 12, 499, 527–8) or On Experience (Essais III, 13, 1066–9, to which we could also add II, 16, 618).
- 45.
See Formigari (1988). According to Villey, Sánchez is arguably the source of some of Montaigne’s reflections on language in III, 13, mentioned in the previous note.
- 46.
In NO they seem to be seen mostly as adventitious (see, for example, I §43), but in De Augmentis, they are included among the innate ones. Cf. De Aug., V, iv; Sp, I 643; IV, 431.
- 47.
I have slightly modified the OFB translation.
- 48.
- 49.
NO I, §40; De Aug. V, iv (Sp I, 641ff; IV, 429ff).
- 50.
Besides showing the fragility of philosophical speculation on non-evident matters, Sextus also extends his criticism to the theories proposed by dogmatists about the phenomena (see PH I, 19–20). Also Montaigne, in spite of his peculiarities, seems to frame his criticism in the same way, as he offers the debate on the astronomical and cosmographic theories as examples of the uncertain nature of reason: “A thousand years ago, if you raised doubts on the sciences of cosmography, this would have been a Pyrrhonian attitude” (Essais, II, 12, 571; I have here slightly modified Screech’s translation). See also Essais 563ff, 570–1.
- 51.
According to Ellis (apud Spedding, Sp I, 114–5), the “Doctrine of the Idols,” in the form it receives in NO, prevents a more systematic division of the pars destruens, as it was conceived in the Partis secundae Delineatio. Spedding, in turn, argues convincingly that the main modification of the Doctrine, from the first version we find in the Advancement of Learning, corresponds to the way it acquires a fourth genre of Idols, namely the idola theatri.
- 52.
Bacon actually refers to this genre of philosophy as “rational” or “dogmatic” (see NO I, §95). But this is not to say that the traditional skeptical arguments could not be employed, in some measure, to counter the other types of theories he considers. The precise meaning Sextus gave to “dogmatize” is a matter of controversy. According to Benson Mates, it corresponds to the philosopher who accepts beliefs, most of them categorically, to which they subscribe not only momentarily, but with firm conviction (1996, p. 60). We may also take it, however, in a more general way, as meaning every philosophical stand about how things actually are, as they are dealt with in philosophical discourse.
- 53.
Villey (1973, pp. 94–7). He notes this point, particularly stressing Montaigne’s criticism of the praise of the Ancients’ authority, notably Aristotle’s, and of the confusion concerning the limits of science and faith.
- 54.
NO I §67; Sp I, 178–9; OFB 107–8, for this quotation and the next from the same aphorism.
- 55.
Here I have changed part of the OFB translation, following mostly the one which is offered in the Spedding edition (see Sp IV, 69).
- 56.
Essais I, 50: “I take the first subject Fortune offers: all are equally good for me… Scattering broadcast a word here, a word there, examples ripped from their context, unusual ones, with no plan and no promises, I am under no obligation to make a good job of it nor even to stick to the subject myself without varying it should it so please me; I can surrender to doubt and uncertainty and to my master-form; which is ignorance…”
- 57.
“…quaeque rebus haereant in medullis” (Dist. Op., Sp. I, 137; OFB 31).
- 58.
About this, see Jardine (1985) and Manzo (2009). Jardine’s paper opposes two tendencies in Bacon’s works that are, according to her, irreconcilable: the provisional results offered by the experientia litterata and the knowledge of essential definitions to be provided by true induction. Manzo carefully examines Bacon’s concept of probability and argues persuasively that, in his real practice of science, he was basically sympathetic to this epistemic notion, in spite of his aim of achieving absolute knowledge. As she says, “malgré lui, Bacon shows himself developing in fact a kind of probabilistic science instead of surpassing the limits of knowledge posed by the skeptical arguments” (2009, p. 137). We may however conjecture that Bacon’s probabilism represents a positive dimension of his provisional usage of skeptical elements, combined with a different methodological perspective, as I will try to show here.
- 59.
I have slightly changed the OFB translation.
- 60.
“Nova est inuenienda ratio, qua mentis obductissimis illabis possimus” (Temporis Partus Masculus, Sp III, 529).
- 61.
NO I, §§76–7; cf. PH I, 165; Acad. II, 114–5. This skeptical motive is current in Renaissance authors with a skeptical tendency, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim, Erasmus, and Montaigne. Bacon and Montaigne equally remark that the state of diaphonia among philosophers may be not so clear in their time because of the Aristotelian authority in philosophy. Cf. Essais II, 12, 538ff.
- 62.
NO I, §§85, 86 (Sp I, 193; OFB 138–9). In Dist. Op. he remarks, concerning the differences between the goal of his science and that of the traditional ones: “For the end set down for this science of mine is not the discovery of arguments but of arts; not what agrees with principles but the principles themselves; not probable reasons but designations and directions for works. And different aims beget different effects. For one aims to beat an opponent in debate, the other to bend nature to works” (Sp I, 135–6; OFB 28–9).
- 63.
“I reject syllogistic demonstration, for it works haphazardly and lets nature slip through its fingers. For though no one doubts that things agreeing in a middle term agree with each other (which is a kind of mathematical certainty), yet this conceals sleight of hand, for the syllogism is made of propositions, propositions of words, and words are the tokens and signs of notions. Thus, if the very notions of mind … are ineptly and recklessly abstracted from things … everything collapses” (Dist. Op. Sp I, 136; OFB, 30–1).
- 64.
One of the problems his method has to face is related to the fact that “the subtlety of nature is greater many times over the subtlety of argument” (NO I, §24; Sp I, 51; OFB, 72–3), and to such an extent that even what he brings forward can hardly be accepted according to the criteria which are in use: “no judgment can be rightly formed either of my method or of the discoveries to which it leads, by means of anticipations (that is to say, of the reasoning which is now in use), since I cannot be called on to abide by the sentence of a tribunal which is itself on trial” (NO I, §34; Sp I, 52; OFB 52–3).
- 65.
Also in I §67 (Sp I, 178; OFB 109) Bacon writes that, while the Academy first introduced acatalepsia as a sort of jest and irony against the sophist, “the New Academy elevated it to a dogmatic status and openly maintained it.”
- 66.
They may equally be classified according to their relation with the person that judges or the subject on which one judges (see PH I, 38–9).
- 67.
I follow here Annas and Barnes’ translation.
- 68.
The same point is noted by Montaigne in his interpretation: see Essais II, 12, 505A.
- 69.
Montaigne again remarks on this aspect of Pyrrhonism in Essais II, 12, 578A.
- 70.
Our understanding of Bacon’s appraisal of Pyrrhonian skepticism could change in view of the more recent scholarship about it. Frede (1987) and Porchat Pereira (2006), for example, give a new evaluation of Sextus’ relation to the empirical medical tradition. But again, it is not clear that this would lead him to step back from the same criticism.
- 71.
Bacon observes, in the proemium of the Instauratio Magna (Sic cogitavit), that human understanding on its own creates cognitive blocks that it is unable to overcome, and then he notes that, in consequence, “human reasoning as applied to the investigation of nature is not at all well sorted and set up, but like some stately pile with no foundations” (Sp I, 121; OFB 2–3) Again, in Dist. Op., he remarks that the second part of NO aims to initiate the equipping of the intellect for the journey: “The purpose … of the second part is to expound the doctrine of improving and perfecting the use of reason in the investigation of things, and of the true helps of the intellect, so that in this way (as far as our human and mortal condition allows) we may raise up the intellect and amplify its faculties [facultate amplificetur] for overcoming the dark and difficulties of nature” (Sp I, 135; OFB 28–9, slightly modified translation). See also NO I, §§ 95, 97.
- 72.
In the Preface of the Instauratio Magna (Sp I, 132; OFB 22–3), he writes that the Fall was not occasioned by “that pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge whereby Adam gave names to the creatures according to their property,” but “ambitious and proud desire of moral knowledge to judge good and evil.”
- 73.
Bacon says that, if he does not strengthen the reasons for hope, “the rest tends more to make men despondent (i.e., to think less and worse than they do now of what is currently available, and feel and know the wretchedness of their lot more fully) than to encourage any enthusiasm or appetite for trying their strength” (Sp I, 198–9; OFB 149, 151).
- 74.
A similar statement is found in Scala Intellectus: “it seems, for sure, that they wished, by means of the distinction between the true and the probable, to destroy the certainty but to retain the use. And, as far as concerns the active part, they want that the choice of things remains unharmed. Nevertheless, once they removed the hope of searching for the truth from men’s soul, there is no doubt, they cut the nerves of human investigation and transformed the indifferent freedom of investigation and the activity of discovering in a certain exercise of judgment” (Sp II, 687).
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Eva, L. (2012). Bacon’s Doctrine of the Idols and Skepticism. In: Machuca, D. (eds) Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 70. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1991-0_6
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