{"title":"The Prophetic Bacon","authors":"S. Fuller","doi":"10.5840/eps202158345","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on how we should be think about historical figures such as Bacon, who are of continuing philosophical, scientific and even political relevance. The impetus for this paper is provided by Daniel Garber’s ‘Bacon’s Metaphysical Method’, which depicts Bacon as making various moves in the scholastic debates of his time. In contrast, I draw two sorts of conclusions: (1) At the historiographical level, I argue against the sort of ‘contextualism’ that artificially constrains the ‘transcendental’ horizons of a thinker such as Bacon, who was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know. What is sometimes called the ‘conversation of mankind’ has just this rather odd communicative character. (2) At the more substantive philosophical level, it is clear that Bacon does not have a conception of knowledge as a kind of (justified) belief at all. On the contrary, knowledge is the product of a process that is largely conducted by humans on humans, very much in the spirit of a judicial inquisition. In this context, humans – no less than the technologies normally found in laboratories – are instruments of knowledge production. Here Bacon presages the c19-c20 ideas of media as the ‘extension of the senses’ and Karl Popper’s World 3.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158345","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on how we should be think about historical figures such as Bacon, who are of continuing philosophical, scientific and even political relevance. The impetus for this paper is provided by Daniel Garber’s ‘Bacon’s Metaphysical Method’, which depicts Bacon as making various moves in the scholastic debates of his time. In contrast, I draw two sorts of conclusions: (1) At the historiographical level, I argue against the sort of ‘contextualism’ that artificially constrains the ‘transcendental’ horizons of a thinker such as Bacon, who was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know. What is sometimes called the ‘conversation of mankind’ has just this rather odd communicative character. (2) At the more substantive philosophical level, it is clear that Bacon does not have a conception of knowledge as a kind of (justified) belief at all. On the contrary, knowledge is the product of a process that is largely conducted by humans on humans, very much in the spirit of a judicial inquisition. In this context, humans – no less than the technologies normally found in laboratories – are instruments of knowledge production. Here Bacon presages the c19-c20 ideas of media as the ‘extension of the senses’ and Karl Popper’s World 3.
期刊介绍:
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal established in 2004 by the Institute of Philosophy (Russian Academy of Sciences). It is devoted to the themes in modern epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The journal supports the policy of interdisciplinarity. It’s based on the belief that the comprehensive analysis of cultural phenomena couldn’t be completed without focusing on the problems of cognition. The epistemological analysis, however, needs the research results from human, social and natural sciences. Sections of the journal: 1.Editorial 2.Panel Discussion 3.Epistemology and Cognition 4.Language and Mind 5.Vista 6.Case Studies -Science Studies 7.Interdisciplinary Studies 8.Archive 9.Symposium 10.Book Reviews