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Preconceived Theories and the Baconian Method

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Preconceived Theories and the Baconian Method William T. Lynch. Solomon's Child: Method in the Early Royal Society of London. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. xv + 292 pp. $60.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8047-3291-8. Reviewed by John Henry Published on H-Albion (February, 2003) Preconceived Theories and the Baconian fellows of the Royal Society, and yet the fellows all Method professed to be following the Baconian method. Although written with some fair and real in‐ Among the usual way of dealing with such genuity, this is a deeply fawed book. It suffers seeming contradictions among the fellows is to ac‐ from the fact that the author, somewhat obvious‐ knowledge the contingencies of history, the social ly, uses a number of cases from late seventeenth- usefulness not just of knowledge but also of century English science to support a preconceived knowledge claims, and the concomitant need to theory about the methodology of Francis Bacon. dress things up in carefully chosen rhetoric. Re‐ Given the fact that one of the main strengths of cent scholarship, therefore, has shown how a par‐ the Baconian method lay in its attempt to avoid ticular version of Baconian scientific method was the distortion which inevitably follows from seek‐ used for promotional and propaganda purposes ing evidence to support preconceived theories, by the leading spokesmen for the Royal Society in this is somewhat ironic. their published works, while in their actual prac‐ In large measure the difficulties with the tice, these same fellows did things in a variety of book arise out of the author's decision to base his different ways. arguments not on original research into the writ‐ The author rejects this approach. He wishes ings and other remains of seventeenth-century to claim, instead, that the variety of different authors, but on what other authors have already methods which can be seen at work among the said about his chosen practitioners of Baconian fellows are all equally Baconian, providing we un‐ science. This is apparent even in the way the au‐ derstand the Baconian method aright. The author thor tries to set up his own original thesis. He provides an outline of a threefold Baconian starts from a well-acknowledged fact: there was a method and argues that each of the fellows he wide variety of methodological approaches to the deals with can be seen as pursuing this tripartite acquiring of natural knowledge used by leading Baconian method in different directions. What H-Net Reviews have previously been seen as deviations from the jects" (pp. 21-2), and by this he means the passive professed Baconianism of the Royal Society, are observation and gathering of matters of fact, un‐ merely the result of our failure to properly under‐ affected (or supposedly unaffected) by any pre‐ stand the Baconian method. According to Lynch, conceived hypotheses or theoretical (much less once we understand the three elements of Bacon's ideological) commitments. Although Bacon schol‐ methodology, we can see how these fellows were ars have disputed the validity of this reading of all Baconians, even though, in the end, their dif‐ Bacon's method, there can be no doubt that it re‐ ferent emphases pulled in different directions and flects what later seventeenth-century writers seemed to undermine the unified picture the lead‐ thought they saw in Bacon's writings. So far, so ing spokesmen for the Society wished to present. good. In principle this sounds very good. If Lynch Lynch goes on, however, to describe what he could succeed in showing this to be the case, we calls "a constructivist definition of objectivity" in would certainly have an enhanced understanding Bacon's philosophy (pp. 22-24). He bases this on of early modern natural philosophy and its devel‐ what he sees as an emphasis upon technological opment. That requires, of course, a detailed analy‐ improvement in Bacon's writings, and what he sis of Bacon's method showing the existence of the sees as the "active manipulation" of nature in ex‐ kind of three-fold complexity that Lynch claims to periments, in order to make it reveal its secrets. discern. Additionally, we need to be shown clear Here we have an active, purposeful dimension in evidence that early modern natural philosophers Bacon's methodology, which somehow runs along‐ also saw these distinctions in Bacon's philosophi‐ side the passive gathering of facts. I believe Lynch cal works along with concise examples of them in‐ has been seriously led astray here by relying upon voking one or other of these distinctions in their secondary sources, instead of looking more close‐ own work. But this is, at best, only tendentiously ly at Bacon himself. presented or, at worst, entirely lacking. The emphasis upon technological improve‐ A clear account of Bacon's method from its ment in Bacon, for example, is a myth which has first principles, through to its most detailed elabo‐ grown up since the industrial revolution. Bacon ration, should have formed the foundation of was one of the frst natural philosophers to insist Lynch's completely new and original interpreta‐ that knowledge of nature should be put to use for tion of Bacon's method. After all, it's not as if the practical benefit of mankind. Looking back Lynch is rejecting the validity of these readings of from after the industrial revolution, indeed from Bacon and replacing them with his own. He ac‐ after the growth of the science-technology com‐ cepts them, and adds his own reading to them. plex which is so characteristic of modern life, Readers unfamiliar with Bacon's methodological scholars took this to be evidence of the great pronouncements are provided with a few unex‐ man's foresight and prescience. As a number of plained and barely adequate Baconian buzz Bacon scholars have tried to suggest, this is entire‐ phrases. Accordingly, they have so little to go on ly anachronistic. If we look at Bacon's examples of that they have to take Lynch's additions pretty useful knowledge, they all come straight out of the much on trust. natural magic tradition, for example how to live Lynch acknowledges what has always been longer, how to create tempests or calm the winds, accepted as the dominant aspect of Baconian how to change oneself into other forms, or how to methodology as the frst of the three-fold method resist poisons. There is hardly a mention of ma‐ he discerns. He refers to this as the "specular con‐ chines. Bacon was not being prescient, he was ception of objects" or the "specular account of ob‐ simply trying to get ivory-tower natural philoso‐ 2 H-Net Reviews phers to pay more attention to what natural magi‐ phasis upon the importance of passive, theory- cians were doing (or claiming to do). But this did free, observation. not mean that Bacon was deviating from his belief We can now move on to what Lynch sees as that the best way to reform knowledge is to com‐ the third aspect of Bacon's method. He calls this a pile (in as theory-free a manner as possible) huge "generative view of objects" and by this he seems databases of matters of fact. On the contrary, as to want to imply that Bacon believed we should he famously said at the outset of the Novum Or‐ strive to uncover the hidden powers in nature ganum (1620), his major statement of his method, which combine together to generate the ordinary "Towards the effecting of works, all that man can objects of our everyday experience (p. 24). Lynch do is put together or part asunder natural bodies. raises this view upon a single quotation in which The rest is done by Nature working within" (Part Bacon expresses a fairly standard reductionist be‐ I, Aphorism p. 4). There are natural powers which lief. Since words are made of letters, if we wish to can accomplish things and all we can do is know understand the forms of words we need to know where to apply them. The best way to discover the letters. Likewise, instead of trying to under‐ what these natural powers are, Bacon would have stand the forms of every creature and artefact in said, is to gather facts and compile them in the ta‐ the world, we should aim to know the presumably bles of instances. restricted qualities which combine together to Lynch tries to support his claims that there is "sustain the essences and forms of all substances" something different going on here, and which is (p. 24). But this reductionism is entirely implicit in not entirely compatible with the passive observa‐ Bacon's discussion of his tables of discovery. His tional aspect of Baconianism, by quoting Bacon on one and only example of how such tables would experiment. Unfortunately, this quotation will not work, in the second part of the Novum Organum, serve his turn. Indeed, this is a famous quotation uses the example of heat, one of the qualities list‐ among philosophers of science, often used to ed by Bacon here. So, once again, Lynch is not pre‐ show that Bacon did not understand experiment senting a new and different aspect of Bacon's in the modern, manipulative sense: "I contrive method, he is merely taking a detail from Bacon's that the office of the sense shall be only to judge account and presenting it as though it has a sepa‐ of the experiment," Bacon wrote, "and that the ex‐ rate existence of its own in Bacon's thought. periment itself shall judge of the thing" (p. 23). Al‐ It seems to me, therefore, that the differentia‐ though not quoted here, Bacon goes on to say that tion of Bacon's method into specular, constructive experiments never "miss or fail," because which‐ and generative approaches not only is not proven ever way they turn out, they answer the question.
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