OrionWorks wrote:
In regards to the above Bacon comments "...and other end-of-history
fruitcakes" I must lodge an inconsequential complaint. Bacon's prose
strikes me as so incredibly convoluted and turgid from my
(occasionally dyslexic) POV that I sometimes wished the writer would
have simply come out and stated the obvious, something like
"...folly follows in the footsteps of those who assume we have
learned everything there is to know about the universe." But then,
Bacon's prose wouldn't have been so eloquent, would it!
It is difficult to understand partly because Bacon wrote in Latin, so
this is a translation. I do not know what his English prose is like,
but when people write in a second language their writing tends to be
stilted. He wrote in Latin because he thought that English might not
last long into the future, and he was writing mainly for future
audiences. He knew that few people in his own time understood or
wanted to hear what he had to say. More than anyone else in history,
he lived in the future. He wrote: "I have lost much time with this
age: I would be glad to recover it with posterity."
It was not unreasonable to think that English might vanish in a few
generations, because there were few speakers and England was on the
periphery of Europe.
The other reason this is difficult is because he describes the
problem in detail. Many people have pointed out the folly of assuming
"we have learned everything there is to know" but Bacon described the
details: who thinks that ("men of a prudent and exact turn of
thought") why they think that, why they are wrong, and what to do
about it. This is a detailed blueprint for how to launch and conduct
the scientific revolution.
Anyone who wishes to advance the cause of science today in opposition
to the barbarian know-nothing, read-nothing people at Sci. Am. and
NewScientist can learn a lot by reading Bacon's methods, because he
faced much worse odds than we do: Elizabethan society had even more
Horgans and Huizengas than we must contend with (although such people
are never in short supply). Also because the revolution he launched
is incomplete and much that he suggested remains to be done.
As to the rest of Bacon's commentary: "...the role of discoverers:"
After my second failed attempt to comprehend the meaning behind the
writers first two sentences I simply gave up.
Perhaps a different translation would help. Here is the first
Aphorism I quoted, #92, in an 1863 translation by Spedding, Ellis and Heath:
"But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to
the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this
-- that men despair and think things impossible. For wise and serious
men are wont in these matters to be altogether distrustful,
considering with themselves the obscurity of nature, the shortness of
life, the deceitfulness of the senses, the weakness of the judgment,
the difficulty of experiment, and the like; and so supposing that in
the revolution of time and of the ages of the world the sciences have
their ebbs and flows; that at one season they grow and flourish, at
another wither and decay, yet in such sort that when they have
reached a certain point and condition they can advance no further."
http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm
Here is a modern translation from Cambridge U., presumably translated
by Jardine & Silverthorn, although they are listed as "editors." It
seems rather flat to me:
"XCII But much the greatest obstacle to the progress of the sciences
into opening up new tasks and provinces within them lies in man's
lack of hope and in the assumption that it is impossible. For grave
and prudent men tend to be quite without confidence in such things,
reflecting in themselves on the obscurity of nature, the shortness of
life, the defects of the senses, the weaknesses of judgment, the
difficulties of experiments, and so on. . . ."
The quote about inventors is from Aphorism 129 (CXXIX).
- Jed
