Bacon, Francis

La prima traduzione italiana del De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623) di Francis Bacon è rimasta inedita per due secoli: il traduttore, il canonico trevigiano Antonio Pellizzari (1747-1845), aveva già dato alle stampe la prima versione italiana del Novum organum (1788) e, ammiratore del filosofo inglese, si era deciso all’impresa di tradurre la più vasta opera baconiana, con il titolo di Della dignità e degli aumenti delle scienze, convinto che quest’opera avrebbe «giovato pur qualche poco la gioventù italiana». Il manoscritto della traduzione, completo di note ed indici, pronto per la stampa, rimase inedito per le lungaggini dovute alla necessaria richiesta dell’imprimatur al S. Uffizio: l’opera infatti era stata messa all’Indice dalla Sacra Congregazione (nel 1669) con la formula donec corrigatur; l’autorizzazione giunse, firmata dal Prefetto dell’Indice Angelo Maj, nel 1847, due anni dopo la morte del pur longevo Antonio Pellizzari. In questo volume si pubblica una trascrizione annotata del manoscritto 1408 del Della dignità e degli aumenti delle scienze conservato nella Biblioteca Comunale di Treviso, corredata, sulla base di carteggi inediti e di fondi manoscritti talora considerati perduti, di una ricostruzione storica della figura del traduttore, inserito nel più ampio contesto della cultura veneta fra Settecento e Ottocento, segmento significativo per la storia della diffusione della filosofia moderna.

This is a study of the links between Francis Bacon and the technical experimenters and projectors of the early Stuart age, and of Bacon's philosophy of technical invention and experiment. This project reappraises the literature on the role of mechanical arts in Francis Bacon. In the past, scholars often maintained that Bacon's knowledge of mechanical arts was limited to learned sources and authors of Renaissance technical treatises, and that his actual links with artisans and entrepreneurs of his time were negligible. This research shifts attention to early Stuart society, and to Bacon's concrete involvement in economic and institutional activities. A major aspect of this work is the study of a set of early modern archival records, the "privileges" for new industrial processes and patents of inventions that Francis Bacon reviewed while a Solicitor and Attorney General during the reign of James I. While Elizabethan privileges for inventions are well documented, this group of early Stuart institutional documents has never been properly analyzed before this investigation. Also, Bacon's role as a patent referee has hardly been mentioned in literature. A scrutiny of this new evidence has shown that Francis Bacon was close to a network of early Stuart mining projectors and assayers, technical practitioners, and inventors of the mechanical arts. Francis Bacon's familiarity with the world of craftsmen significantly contributed to the development of his philosophy. Important methodological features of the "works" of mechanical arts were absorbed into Bacon's system. An analysis of the central concept of experientia literata (Literate Experience), the key notion behind Bacon's influential experimental histories, shows that Bacon developed this idea paying close attention to the actual practices of mechanical artisans of his time. Bacon's enquiry of dense and rare is the best example of an application of the quantitative research program of experientia literata. Bacon‘s ideas on this issue can be tied to experiments for the determination of specific gravities developed in a monetary context. Overall, Bacon‘s program of quantification calls for a revision of Thomas Kuhn‘s sharp dichotomy between a mathematical and a Baconian experimental tradition in seventeenth-century science.

A discussion of the quarrel of philosophy and poetry in its various stages in the history of western ideas: from the early poets (e.g., Homer), to the first philosophic attack on poetry (e.g., Xenophanes), to the poetic counter-attack against philosophy (e.g., Aristophanes), to the classical synthesis (e.g., Plato), to the modern solution (Machiavelli to Nietzsche).

Bilim, hem sistematik bir bilgi kümesi, hem de belirli bir konuyu bilme isteğinden yola çıkarak belirli bir amaca yönelen bir bilgi edinme ve yöntemli araştırma sürecidir. Bilimsel bilgi, genel-geçerlilik ve zorunluluk iddiâsına sâhiptir ve belirli bir problem alanıyla ilgili soru ve açıklamaların nesnel bağlamını içerir. 1 Târih boyunca bilimlerin sınıflandırılması, çeşitli incelemelere konu olmuş ve bu sınıflandırmalar, bilimlerin yöneldikleri amaç (kuramsal ve pratik bilimler), inceledikleri konular (reel ve ideal bilimler), bilgi kaynakları (deney ve us bilimleri), kullandıkları yöntemler (doğa ve tin bilimleri) üzerinden yapılmıştır. 2 Cemâl Yıldırım'a göre bilime, "kendine özgü entelektüel bir girişim, olgusal dünyâyı tanımaya ve açıklamaya yönelik bir arayış" olarak bakmak mümkündür. Bilim, aynı zamanda da kendine özgü norm ve davranış biçimlerine bağlı, işbirliğine dayanan sosyal bir kurumdur. Olgusal bilimlerde, dünyâda olup bitenleri betimleme, açıklama ve öndeyide bulunma esastır ve bu bilimlerde ortaya konan önermeler, olgusal içeriklidir; doğrulukları ve geçerlilikleri de olgusal verilerle sınanır. Yâni, olgusal verilerle doğruluk ve geçerlilikleri tespit edilemeyen hiçbir önerme, bu bilimlere konu olamaz. 3

What follows here is not a definition of art by decree. Nor is this some kind of art manifesto. We are not saying this is how art should be, or could be, but how it is, if you let go of the prison of aesthetics, and follow an infinitely more interesting conceptual trail. This is about uncovering and identifying an approach to art which avoids the triviality of sensory-based aesthetic theory and moves instead towards exploring the experiential worlds that art presents us with. And this approach is not about diminishing the sensory enjoyment of artworks, but about placing them in a much richer context, where they can work a far greater magic.

We propose to read Francis Bacon's doctrine of the idols of the mind as an investigation firmly entrenched in his mental-medicinal concerns and we argue that an important role therein is played by the imagination. Looking at the ways in which the imagination serves to pinpoint several crucial aspects of the idolic mind permits us to signal the explicit or implicit cross-references between what in Bacon's tree of knowledge appear as distinct branches: the various faculties and their arts; the mind, the body, and their league; natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of man. The consequence of this rich picture of the diagnosis of the mind is an equally rich conception of the cure, which comprises both epistemic and physiological aspects. We extract the features of this integrated view out of Bacon's epistemological and medical natural historical writings, which we propose to read in tandem. We also propose a number of sources for Bacon's views on the imagination, whose variety accounts for the multivalent, sometimes elusive, but surely pervasive role of the imagination in the Baconian diagnosis and cure of the mind.

Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural is a collection of sacred couplets. It is considered to be a masterpiece written on the subject of human thoughts. It has also been in par with the Holy Bible and with John Milton’s Paradise Lost, it has also been compared with other great books of many other religions. Thiruvalluvar’s views in Thirukkural is considered to be in a reasonable tone, and it also has hints of revolutionary ideas, such as terminating the system of caste. Thirukkural, the most celebrated work, has been an immense influence over the Tamil life and culture since ithas great views over the insights of our day to day life, making it to be universal. This paper aims to discuss the couplets translated by G. U. Pope’s on the chapters namely Learning and Friendship from the Thirukkural to be compared with the Book of Proverbs from the Holy Bible and with the essay Of Friendship by Francis Bacon.

Progetto grafico, redazione e impaginazione Edimond srl -Città di Castello (Pg) AdAnnaLisa tutto sempre e comunque © Copyright 2010 EDIMOND SRL Via Morandi, 25 Ci rrà di Casrello (Pg) www.edimond.com ' A questo proposito sono esemplari le seguenti parole di Warburg, tratte dall'introduzione a Mnemosyne: BA. Warburg, L'ingresso dello stilt! ideale anticheggialltt!, in lA rinascita del paganesimo \ antico e altri scritti, dr., pp. 630-632. 9 G. Carema, Aby Warbut;g: simbolo e tragedia, in «Aur Auo., cit., p. 103.

Fearing that his health would not permit him time to leave to the world the full range and depth of his offerings in philosophy, R. G. Collingwood sat down in the late summer of 1938 with the intention of getting as much of his thinking down on paper and out in public as he could in the time left to him. The result of this flurry of activity was An Autobiography: a short, bold, and stylistically informal book that is not only immensely readable as the life-story of an unceasingly active man, but also philosophically rich, in places intriguing and, above all, accessible to any reader. After four chapters of what are mostly memoirs of his youth, chapter five of this Autobiography describes one of the fundamental concepts of Collingwood’s thinking on various subjects: namely, what he calls his “logic” (or “theory”) of question and answer. It is an extremely suggestive and deceptively complex chapter – which is probably part of the reason why Collingwood scholars have offered so many different accounts of the significance or “place” of “question and answer” in Collingwood’s philosophy...

"Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) (Jan 2011, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4384-2940-3)
A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets: first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Main Themes of the Book
2. Précis of the Contributions
I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont)
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen)
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard)
III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)
9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths)
10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York)
IV. Applications to Psychiatry: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz)
12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv)
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail)
15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)"

Commentators generally expound Bacon’s position on the art–nature relationship in terms of how much it retained or departed from traditional conceptions. This paper argues that an appreciation of the Baconian meaning of the terms “art” and “nature” requires a close examination of his wider cosmogonical speculations. Bacon’s cosmogonical account moves from a state of unbridled chaos to the relatively stable system for which the term “nature” is normally used. The fundamental principle lying at the heart of Baconian cosmogony is an enriched and appetitive matter: eternal, unchanging, and the plenipotentiary source of all things. Successive limitations of matter’s absolute power produced a lazy and habitual nature, which Bacon labelled “nature free.” To shift nature from this otiose condition, the Baconian operator recapitulates the original binding of matter. Bacon designated the systematic procedures of binding nature the science of magic. Magic is Bacon’s human counterpart to the original cosmogonical process that gave rise to the current system of nature. In Bacon’s cosmogony, all possible worlds unfold out of matter: the function of art is to shake out nature’s hidden folds. Hence, the distinction between naturalia and artificialia maps on to the distinction between actual and potential. Nature free is without purpose, but art — nature bound — knowingly brings into being an alternative nature designed for human utility.

Se exponen los elementos centrales del proyecto baconiano de la reforma del saber tomando como eje su visión de la historia de la naturaleza y del hombre. El concepto de ciencia desarrollado por Bacon está fuertemente connotado por su visión de la historia. Bacon analiza el estado del saber presente y pasado, al tiempo que proyecta una ciencia renovada futura en el marco de una perspectiva histórica donde tanto la naturaleza como el hombre y la ciencia transcurren por distintas etapas. En esta periodización de la historia, el pecado original es considerado un hecho decisivo que determinará cambios radicales e irreparables. Este repaso de la consideración histórica de Bacon permite acceder a su proyecto científico desde una perspectiva integradora que no s610 considere la ciencia en su individualidad sino también en el marco político, religioso y social en el que fue ideada.

En este trabajo expondré el desarrollo de las distintas
etapas de la historia del conocimiento humano que Bacon liga
estrechamente con la historia de la salvación del hombre. En
segundo lugar, indicaré cuáles son las características del
conocimiento salomónico y los resultados de la comparación
entre conocimiento humano y conocimiento divino. A
continuación, mostraré cómo la propuesta de un método nuevo,
nunca antes practicado, para la restauración de las ciencias
tiene antecedentes pre-lapsarios (anteriores al pecado).
Finalmente explicaré en qué sentido el método inductivo es
caracterizado en la propuesta de Bacon como una vía de
conocimiento nueva y vieja, natural y artificial a la vez.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Aristotelianism still was the leading current of natural philosophy and atomistic theories began to arise, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura stood out as an attractive and dangerous model. The present paper reassesses several relevant aspects of Lucretius' materialistic psychology by focusing on the problem of the soul's repartition through the limbs discussed in Book 3. A very successful Lucretian image serves as fil rouge throughout this survey: the description of a snake chopped up, with its pieces moving on the ground (DRN 3.657-669). The paper's first section sets the poet's theory against the background of ancient psychology, pointing out its often neglected assimilation of Aristotelian elements. The second section highlights the influence of De Rerum Natura and its physiology of the soul on Bernardino Telesio, Agostino Doni and Francis Bacon, since all of these authors engage in an original recombination of mechanical and teleological explanations.

In 1856, Delia Bacon published an article in Putnam's Monthly simply titled "William Shakespeare and his Plays: An Inquiry ConcerningThem." A ruckus ensued in both scholarly and popular circles, with repercussions on a wide scale. Delia Bacon argued that William Shakespeare, the Stratford actor, could not possibly be the author of the works attributed to him.Instead, she suggested not only Francis Bacon as a possible author, but also a group of unnamed collaborators creating the Shakespeare opus as a collective work.

Other murmurs of dissent about William Shakespeare's claims to authorship had surfaced over the years but Delia Bacon's article, championed by Nathaniel Hawthorne, incited a frenzied controversy peaking in the 1880s and 1890s, at which point it became known as one of the most prevalent, pressing, and exasperating issues dominating the American magazine scene.

Delia Bacon envisioned her opponents as fearful of all that a challenge to Shakespeare's integrity would represent."If you dissolve him, do you not dissolve us with him?" she imagines them crying:"If you take him to pieces, do you not undo us, also?" While slightly histrionic, Delia Bacon's constructions of what might really be behind the Stratfordian fears had some basis in reality.

The various defensive and counter-offensive maneuvers employed by her critics didmostcertainlyillustrateaprofoundfearofwhatauthorialdisplacementanddissolutionmightrepresent.The debate was formulated as the supreme case study of authorship and ultimately reflected more upon the success of the Baconians' rhetorical strategies and upon theories of realist art than it did upon the popularity of FrancisBacon, claimant.

Challenging Shakespeare's authorial power was tantamount to challenging authorial integrity itself, or at least it was so constructed in nineteenth-century discourse. And yet, unlike the formulations of authorship dissected in legal discussions of copyright or analyzed by magazine editors eager to codify new...

American Periodicals Vol.6,1996
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L’arte europea conta un tale numero di grandi raffigurazioni della Crocifissione che essa costituisce una magnifica armatura su cui innestare ogni tipo di sentimento e di sensazione. Può sembrarle curioso che una persona non religiosa adotti il tema della Crocifissione ma non credo che qui la religione c’entri. Pensi alle grandi Crocifissioni che conosciamo… non si sa se sono state dipinte da uomini con convinzioni religiose. […] Finora non ho trovato un soggetto altrettanto valido per abbracciare certi campi del sentimento e del comportamento umani. Forse è solo perché sono stati così in tanti a occuparsi di questo particolare tema che è venuta a crearsi questa armatura – non trovo parole migliori per dirlo – attorno alla quale uno può attivare ogni genere di livello sensibile. (Francis Bacon)

This essay complements recent work by Soreana Corneanu situating Bacon's epistemology in a larger lineage of literature concerning 'cultura animi' in early modern Europe, by focusing on Bacon's conception of a therapeutic philosophical 'Georgics of the mind' in The Advancement of Learning, the Essays, and other texts. We aim to show firstly (in Part 2) how Bacon's conception of human nature, and the importance of habit and custom, reflects the ancient pagan thinkers' justifications of philosophical therapeutics. Attention will also be paid in this connection to Bacon's sensitivity to another marker of ancient therapeutic philosophy as Pierre Hadot in particular has recently presented it: the proliferation of different rhetorical and literary forms aiming at different pedagogic, therapeutic, and psychogogic aims. Part 3 then will examine Bacon's changes in practical or 'magistral' philosophy, carried out on the therapeutic ethical grounds which Part 2 has examined, but proposing a much more active 'architecture of fortune' to philosophical and political aspirants.

This paper will explore Bacon’s perceptions of the scientific connotations of the Spanish empire and his reception of early modern Iberian science. Its aim is to analyze the extent to which the Iberian background played a role in the making of Bacon’s project of a utopian imperial science, by drawing attention to some particular cases: the reception of the Jesuits, the natural histories, the chronicles of discovery, and the evaluation of Columbus’ voyages. It is shown that Bacon’s relationship with Iberian themes and sources was explicit in a few cases (Acosta, Columbus, Inca Garcilaso, the Jesuit order), while at other times the relationship is more indirect and implicit (Fernández de Oviedo, López de Gomara, Martire, Ramusio, Benzoni, Fernández de Quirós). It is argued that early modern imperial Spain seems to have been assessed by Bacon as a model of a growing empire, an empire whose greatness relied heavily on the Jesuit order and the colonization of America. The paper concludes that the attentive observation of the Spanish empire as well as the acquaintance with the Jesuits and the Iberian chronicles must have inspired Bacon’s project of science and his ideas on the articulation of science with empire. At the same time, other past and contemporary authors and traditions found their place in Bacon’s program for the reform of learning. This eclectic blend underlying this project rather than depriving the end result of novelty, allows us to realize the new decisive contents Bacon added to the diverse ideas and practices he relied on.

Resumen

El registro, la documentación y el tránsito de obras se ha emancipado del fetiche sacralizador del Museo. La consigna de Adorno del museo como mausoleo anunciaba ya la puesta en circulación de las obras, su operación de fuga o salida hacia el público por otro medio, hacia la interactividad que la Web posibilita; la de sus galerías virtuales, sus espacios telemáticos, sus portales de arte y revistas digitales.
Esta insubordinación de las obras, y el abandono del museo, ha radicalizado la desconfianza de la institucionalidad del Arte sobre los medios y tecnologías digitales. De allí que la industria cultural haya tomando recaudos respecto de los derechos a la exhibición, la propiedad intelectual de las imágenes –sometiendo cada vez más a la cultura a una lógica mercantil y del espectáculo– socavando con ello el potencial crítico de la producción visual, convirtiéndola en una práctica soft y cosmética, políticamente correcta. La institucionalidad cultural se dota así de sus sistemas inmunológicos para reeducar el exabrupto y librarse de las cáusticas estrategias con la que los artistas han querido instalar debates política y socialmente relevantes en la agenda iconográfica del inconsciente colectivo del continente.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

"Notwithstanding Francis Bacon’s praise for the philosophical role of the mechanical arts, historians have often downplayed Bacon’s connections with actual artisans and entrepreneurs. Addressing the specific context of mining culture, this study proposes a rather different picture. The analysis of a famous mining metaphor in _The Advancement of Learning_ shows us how Bacon’s project of reform of knowledge could find an apt correspondence in civic and entrepreneurial values of his time. Also, Bacon had interesting and so far unexplored links with the early modern English mining enterprises, like the Company of Mineral and Battery Works, of which he was a shareholder. Moreover, Bacon’s notes in a private notebook, _Commentarius Solutus_, and records of patents of invention, allow us to start grasping Bacon’s connections with the metallurgist and entrepreneur Thomas Russell. Lastly, this paper argues that, to fully understand Bacon’s links with the world of Stuart technicians and entrepreneurs, it is necessary to consider a different and insufficiently studied aspect of Bacon’s interests, namely his work as patents referee while a Commissioner of Suits."

The exact nature of the relation between science and Scripture in the
thought of Francis Bacon is a well-studied but controversial field. In this
paper, it is shown that Bacon, though convinced that there exists no
enmity between the book of God’s wisdom (Holy Writ) and the book of
God’s power (nature), usually tries to separate knowledge acquired by
reason (philosophy) from knowledge acquired by faith (divinity). In his
exposition of the principle of the conservation of matter, however, Bacon
seems to find himself constrained to invoke Scriptural truths in a manner
that he usually disapproves of. In order to establish this principle, which
is so essential to his overall scientific program, he appeals both to the
Bible and Greek mythology in a way that points to certain conceptual
tensions within his natural philosophy.

The aim of this article is to examine how Bacon proposed to replace the older patterns of authority and freedom in science. I hope that this textual exegesis will contribute to the
reflection on freedom and power in modernity. In doing this I have in mind
three important considerations. First, Bacon deals with authority and
freedom in different fields: theology, law, politics and science. Second, the
psychological conditions of scientists are relevant in order to examine the
extent of the scientific freedom. Third, Bacon thought of science as part of a
political network. Sections I and II expose Bacon’s approach to authority in
theology, law and politics by contrasting his ideas on authority and science.
Section III deals with the psychological aspects of the freedom of the
scientist. Sections IV and V are concerned with authority in science
considered both as an institution of the state and as the inquisition of nature.

This paper establishes the 'emblematic' use of natural history as a propaedeutic to self-betterment in the Renaissance; in particular, in the natural histories of Gessner and Topsell, but also in the works of Erasmus and Rabelais. Subsequently, it investigates how Francis Bacon's conception of natural history is envisaged in relation to them. The paper contends that, where humanist natural historians understood the use of natural knowledge as a preliminary to individual improvement, Bacon conceived self-betterment foremost as a means to Christian charity, or social-betterment. It thus examines the transformation of the moralizing aspect of Renaissance natural history in Bacon's conception of his Great Instauration.

Our contemporary concept of method, as a formal discourse that comes before science itself, and aims at directing the scientific inquiry, prescribing several steps and checking-procedures, is not the concept of method that was familiar to seventeenth-century educated minds. In the sixteenth century, the French scholar Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) was instrumental in importing the notion of “method” from rhetoric into logic. In his French Dialectic (1555) method is described as an art of disposition, which comes after “invention” and “judgment”, and explains how teachers should present and impart their (already acquired) knowledge. This pedagogical meaning was still dominant in the seventeenth century, even when people, in the wake of Bacon and Descartes, started to consider the notion of a “method of invention”, an expression which would have rung as an oxymoron to anyone schooled in the Ramist tradition. The paper carefully considers Descartes’s and Bacon’s use of the term “method” or “methodus”. Bacon never used it to name his own way of invention (for which he has terms such as “via”, “ratio” or “induction”), and he carefully restricted “method” to the old meaning of an art of transmission. Descartes, even though he may be considered as the inventor of the modern acceptation of method as an ars inveniendi, modelled on geometrical analysis, still retained the old pedagogical connotation – it is quite clear that, for him, acquiring new knowledge methodically was the result of some sort of self-education rather than the application of formal rules. Finally, this study may contribute to revising our standard approach of the contrast between the Baconian and the Cartesian “methods”. It is perhaps not as much epistemological as it is anthropological and maybe religious, revealing important differences in their approaches of human capabilities and the progress of science.

There is no unanimity among recent historians about Francis Bacon's theory of matter. Disagreement exists in particular about Bacon's atomist and animistic ideas. My claim is that although Bacon changed his views on atomism repeatedly, he never rejected it completely. I shall reconstruct Bacon's various opinions in chronological order to establish his final evaluation of atomism and his reasons for it. Because Bacon never held an orthodox atomist matter theory identical with Greek atomism, for this paper I will define atomism in the broadest sense, as a corpuscular matter theory that posits final and indivisible particles. Following this semantic delimitation, two successive Baconian opinions may be distinguished: the first took the atomism to constitute an ontological and causative-operational principle; the second deprived the atom of its causative-operational ability, but did not touch its ontological priority. Furthermore, I will investigate the question of the coexistence of atomism and pneumatism in Bacon's theory, a point that has been discussed in the influential interpretations by Kargon and Rees. However, I shall argue that Bacon did not regard these two doctrines as incompatible.