Ok, before we move on to Descartes – which I have some exciting ideas for, by the way – let’s return briefly to a critique of Bacon, who I introduced here.
Remember, there are many avenues of critique, but I’m concentrating specifically on what we’ve inherited from these thinkers today, which parts of their thought are parts of our psychologies and cultures, and where there might be limitations.
What did Bacon give us? Induction, the scientific method, experimentation, his was a theory of epistemology – a theory about knowledge.
He said that knowledge about the world comes from the senses and should be carefully and systematically collected to make use of instrumentally.
Ok, so there are two lines of criticism I’d like to discuss today. First, the idols – the idea that knowledge is distorted by human cognition. Second, the idea of discovery, specifically the difference between discovery and creation. My main argument will be that Bacon neglected he subjective element in epistemology.
As you’ll recall, the idols are what today we’d call cognitive or subjective biases that distort knowledge about the world and limit our ability to accurately collect it.
Bacon called them idols of the tribe, cave, marketplace, and theatre. Take idols of the tribe. These are idols of human nature. We are biased, we are emotional, we are irrational, for example.
He says, that ‘‘Subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge… in short, emotion marks and stains the understanding in countless ways which are sometimes impossible to perceive.’
Today, we know that emotion is an integral part of our cognitive process, it guides us as much as reason and logic. As Heidegger says, we always have some kind of mood that paints our perception of the world. Discoveries are driven by fear, joy, desire, laughter, comfort, jealousy, empathy, as much as reason and logic
This is something the Romantics believed too. Emotions aren’t undesirable, they’re a part of our nature, and must be part of the philosophical picture
The same critique can be applied to Bacon’s idols of the cave – the idols of our ‘particular’ individual nature. He says, for example that, ‘Men fall in love with particular pieces of knowledge and thoughts’ as if this is a problem. Of course we do. We have interests, hobbies, our guided by cultural and intellectual beliefs.
So when Bacon hoped that we could free the mind from these idols to ‘discover’ more perfect knowledge he was mistaken. The key word here is ‘discover’, as if knowledge only comes from outside of us, to be uncovered.
Let’s think about this more carefully. What would this mean.
We’ll focus on the question of where knowledge comes from, what its source is.
Throughout Bacon’s work we keep coming back to the idea that knowledge comes from outside of us, from god, and from what god has left in nature for us to uncover.We then induct knowledge through the senses.
We can uncover a clue to why this is a problem in the very title of his book: the new instrument. The word new appears in many titles of the great books of the time. Galileo’s the two new sciences. Kepler’s A New Astronomy
What does new really mean. If knowledge comes from nature or god then new knowledge and technology is being given to us. But this gives the impression that we, as humans are inactive participants. Clearly we have some kind of role to play in creating the new.
There’s a really important question here about how we create the future, how the future unfolds.Do we just discover the future, discover innovation? Discovery was an important theme in Bacon’s day, with the discovery of the new world, and rediscovery of Ancient philosophers during the renaissance.He said, for example, that ‘For my way of discovering sciences goes far to level men’s wits, and leaves but little to individual excellence; because it performs everything by the surest rules and demonstrations.’
We see again and again that Bacon presumes truth is external to us, objective, ready to be ‘discovered.’ The idols are just in the way.
Let’s take a different approach. That we, as humans, are participants, not in the discovery of knowledge, but in the creation of knowledge. For the Romantics, for example, epistemology was a synthesis, between our perception, our interpretation, and our imagination of the world. We are part of that process.
We create knowledge, we guide scientific discoveries and innovation, by our passions, interests, feelings, emotions, values, imaginations, and temperaments. Knowledge creation is subjective.
As the historian Lewis Mumford has described it, our scientific world picture is ‘under-dimensioned’ because the fidelity to ‘observed fact’ ‘devaluates every aspect of human experience.’ Bacon privileges the observed and the discovered over the created.
The epistemologist Jean Piaget also wrote that ‘I think that human knowledge is essentially active. To know is to assimilate reality into systems of transformation… knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems of transformations that can be carried out on or with this object.’ For Piaget, the world is not out there waiting to be absorbed or written onto the blank slate of the mind, but knowledge is a product of an interaction, a symbiosis between our mind and the world. Our mind is a part of the world. The world works upon the world.
Postmodern and romantic philosophy brings this subjective movement back into the picture. And Bacon does hint at this idea, especially when he emphasises that science should look for what is useful – he just doesn’t pursue the question – useful to who? Useful to what? His is though, a philosophy of action, of the creating the future.
He said, for example, ‘We too need first to elicit the discovery of true causes and axioms from every kind of experience: and we must look for illuminating, not profitable, experiments.’ And that ‘The true and legitimate goal of the sciences is to endow human life with new discoveries and resources.’
So we can distinguish in Baconian thought between the static and the dynamic parts of epistemology. Yes, there are objective laws which are static, unchanging – but even these are discovered, knowledge about them created, and then used with subjective minds.
Most knowledge though is dynamic – it changes over time. This is especially true when ‘scientifically’ studying humans. Knowledge creation is organic. It responds, transforms, humans are reactive. That’s why there’s something called the ‘replication crisis’ in psychology – studies in the past have been impossible to reproduce. Why? Because people, the world, things – change!
Which, in conclusion, brings me back to another of Bacon’s idols. Idols of the marketplace – of human communication. He points to the problem of how humans can invent ‘names of things that do not exist.’ But this is a key part of experimentation, of observation, of creation – inventing the future. We have to remember that the future does not unfold, is not discovered, but is created by us.
Ok, what do you think? Have I been unfair? What do you like or dislike about Bacon’s thought. Let me know in the comments. I’m working on the next video on Descartes – but in the meaning time I might talk briefly about Trumpism. Either way, thanks for watching and see you next time.