Anti-System in the Philosophical Practice of Francis Bacon

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I ask whether Francis Bacon constitutes a revealing exception to the modern predilection for ‘system.’ First, I consider evidence for reading Bacon as a philosopher strongly attracted toward the ideal of system. Second, I show how reflecting on Bacon’s philosophical practice can motivate an ‘anti-system‘ reading of his texts. In considering the small number of works in which Bacon explicitly discusses ‘system’ under that name (in particular, the Descriptio globi intellectualis), I clarify what is and is not meant by ‘philosophical system’ as distinct from other ideas of system (e.g. ‘system of the heavens’). Third, I draw from the Temporis Masculus Partum and Novum Organum to argue that Bacon’s doctrine of the ‘idols of the mind’ amounts to a thoroughgoing critique of system in philosophy. Fourth, I show how and why Bacon deploys the aphoristic form in Novum Organum as an alternative to system. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which an ‘anti-system’ reading of Bacon has the power to enhance our appreciation of other early modern authors who write philosophy without pretensions to system.KEYWORDS: BaconSystemAphorismMethod Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. In the second section of this paper, I acknowledge a sense in which Aristotle’s dialectical inquiries might reasonably count as a ‘system.’2. References to Bacon’s Advancement of Learning are to Bacon (Citation2000), cited in the text as ‘Advancement,’ accompanied by book, chapter and section number, and followed by page number. I have modernized most of the spellings.3. References to Bacon’s Valerius Terminus are to Bacon (Citation1864–74), The Works of Francis Bacon, edited by J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath, volume 3, cited in the text as ‘VT’ and followed by page number.4. Citations of Bacon’s De augmentis scientiarum, abbreviated to ‘DAS,’ are to Bacon (Citation1864–74), by book and chapter number, followed by one reference to page number in volume 1 (containing the Latin text) and another reference to page number in volume 4 (containing the English translation of Francis Headlam). The former references are useful not just for Bacon’s Latin, but also for Ellis’s suggestive footnotes.5. Jardine (Citation1974, 178n1). The ‘division/partition’ distinction is not, however, original to Melanchthon. As Vickers (Citation1968, 36) observes, it appears in both Cicero and Quintilian.6. Those who impose ‘system’ onto Bacon include his editors, early and recent. For James Spedding, the question is ‘how far, by what means, and with what motive, Bacon at one time wished to keep his system secret’ (Bacon Citation1864–74, vol. 1, 107). That Bacon has a system, he takes as beyond question. Graham Rees, the most recent editor of Bacon’s texts, seems equally convinced that Bacon has a ‘system.’ But the list of those who take for granted that Bacon has a system, never noticing the virtual absence of the term in his writings, is a long one. Even Ellis, despite his polymathic brilliance, could not help himself from applying the term to Bacon (see, e.g., Bacon Citation1864–74, vol. 1, 23–24).7. References to the Novum Organum are to Bacon (Citation2004), cited in both text and notes as ‘NO’ with book number and aphorism number, followed by page number. Translations of passages from NO are mostly my own, though I have occasionally used renderings that appear in Bacon (Citation1864–74), vol. 1. This translation was commissioned and corrected by Ellis and Spedding, but the actual translator preferred to remain anonymous; see Spedding’s note at Bacon (Citation1864–74), vol. 1, xiv.8. References to the Descriptio globi intellectualis are to Bacon (Citation1996), vol. 6 of The Oxford Francis Bacon, Philosophical Studies c.1611–1619, ed. Graham Rees, cited in the text as ‘DGI’ followed by page number. I have occasionally modified the renderings that appear in this volume.9. I take this formulation from e-mail correspondence with Mark Jordan, for whom it signals the sense in which Thomas Aquinas neither thinks nor writes a system.10. Therefore, despite the occurrences of systema in Bacon’s corpus, it remains true to say that Bacon’s published works contain no occurrences of either ‘system’ or ‘systema.’ I do not mean to suggest that Bacon’s cosmological speculations are irrelevant for understanding the deeper intentions of his thought. Minkov Citation2018 has many helpful suggestions for grasping the relevance of what he aptly terms ‘Bacon’s psycho-political cosmology,’ particularly as deployed in De sapientia vetorum.11. Another place attesting Bacon’s awareness of the distinction (but also connection) between ‘system of the heavens’ and ‘philosophical system’ is aphorism 62 of the Novum Organum: ‘for as on the phenomena of the heavens many hypotheses may be constructed, so likewise (and more also) many various dogmas may be set up and established on the phaenomena of philosophy’ (NO 1.62, 96).12. The four complaints: the ‘triple motion’ of the earth, the separation of sun from the company of the planets, the introduction of so much immobility into nature, the desire for the Moon to cling to the Earth as it were in Epicyclo (see DGI 121–23).13. The polymath Robert Leslie Ellis, who edited parts of Bacon’s works, ruefully comments: ‘No man less deserved to be spoken of as a merely calculating astronomer’ (Bacon Citation1864–74, vol. 3, 740n1).14. References to the Temporis Partus Masculus are to the Latin text as it appears in Bacon (Citation1864–74), vol. 3, hereafter cited as ‘TPM.’ Readers will benefit from the new translation of the TPM scheduled to appear in volume V of the Oxford Francis Bacon, Early Philosophical Writings to c.1611, ed. Rhodri Lewis, Sophie Weeks and Daniel Andersson. The translations that appear in Farrington (Citation1964) sometimes hit the mark, but they are not always reliable. Except where indicated, I have made my own translations of passages from the TPM.15. To call Bacon himself a stuprator would be a gross libel. Nevertheless, one can observe that in his Brief Lives, Aubrey writes: ‘He was a παιδεραστἠς’ (Citation1898, 71). Read in context, it seems doubtful that Aubrey meant this description as an attack. Just one page earlier, we learn that ‘all that were great and good loved and honoured him.’16. Compare Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human sec.9 on the prestige and domination of ‘the very worst methods, not the very best’ (Citation1996, 15). A very ‘Baconian’ passage appears in an 1884 notebook entry: ‘It is something childish or even a kind of deceit when a thinker presents a whole of knowledge, a system—we are too clever not to harbor the deepest doubts about the possibility of such a whole. It is enough if we agree on a whole of premises of method—on ‘preliminary truths’ by which to work, as the navigator in the sea adheres to a certain direction’ (Citation2009, Spring 1884, 25[449]; the entry is titled ‘Die vorläufigen Wahrheiten’ [‘The preliminary truths’]).17. A point made compellingly by Weeks (Citation2019).18. Here I use the translation of Weeks (Citation2019, 33).19. Here I adopt Farrington’s rendering (Citation1964, 64). But more literally: ‘invented a variety of things from their nothings.’20. Farrington’s rendering. More literally, ‘leveled things into a wilderness of nothings.’21. Farrington’s rendering (not literal, but it captures the spirit aptly).22. For helpful perspective on the occasional use of ‘system’ (along with ratio and via) as a synonym for methodus, see Zagorin (Citation1998, 52).23. Compare what Bacon says in the Advancement of Learning: ‘There is a seducement that worketh by the strength of the impression, and not by the subtilty of the illaqueation; not so much perplexing the reason, as overruling it by power of the imagination’ (Advancement 2.14.8, 394).24. See, for example, Bacon’s favorable allusion to the Phaedrus in part 2 of Novum Organum (NO 2.26, 288).25. Bacon is clear that the division of idols into classes is only for pedagogical convenience, given ‘for the sake of teaching’ (docendi gratia: NO 1.39, 78).26. A notebook entry that illuminates what Nietzsche might mean by describing Bacon as a ‘realist’ reads: ‘Idealists—e.g. in the sky, the measure, the order, the tremendous kind of system and simplicity, shuddering admiring, put things far away, ignore the individual. The realists want the opposite shudder, that of the innumerable many: that is why they overwhelm the foreground, their enjoyment is the belief in the superabundance of creative powers, the impossibility of being able to count’ (Nietzsche Citation2009, 1884.25[195]).27. That is, Pope Alexander VI.28. For a helpful discussion of the contrast between ‘magistral’ and ‘initiative’ discourse, see Jardine (Citation1974, 174–178).29. As Crilly (Citation2022, 100) observes in a fascinating chapter on Bacon’s most brilliant editor, Robert Leslie Ellis attributes the following remark to Bacon: ‘When knowledge is systemized it is less likely to increase than before.’ Unfortunately, I have not succeeded in locating these exact words (or the Latin they might translate) anywhere in Bacon’s corpus. For Ellis’s attribution to the maxim to Bacon, see pp. 34–35 of his 1846 report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, accessible at www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/4663530. See, for example, Melzer (Citation2014, 317).31. Vickers in Bacon (Citation1999, xvii), quoted in Weeks (Citation2019, 11n51).32. A point suggested by Vickers himself when he speaks of ‘the formulation of téchnai, ‘arts’ or systems generally’ (Citation1968, 35). But what do we gain by conflating ‘techne’ with ‘system,’ especially when the interpretation of a philosophical text is at stake? The conflation might be more excusable in other contexts, e.g. a technical workplace in which problem-solvers might speak indifferently of systems, techniques, or methods (cf. my first sense of ‘system’ in section two). A more recent instance of confusion generated by equivocating on ‘system’ appears in Andrew Hui’s otherwise helpful discussion of Bacon’s use of the aphorism. Within a single paragraph, Hui (Citation2019, 19) suggests both that Bacon has a system (‘Bacon looks forward in forging a modern system of natural history’) and that he does not have a system (‘Method, order, and systems are basically anticoncepts for Bacon, Pascal and Nietzsche’).33. As Mark Jordan observes, a list of thinkers in the history of ethics unconstrained by ‘academic notions of philosophy’ might easily ‘see Samuel Johnson as the leading moral philosopher writing in English’ (Citation1992, 503n32).34. For an illuminating assessment of efforts to expand the canon of early modern philosophy to include women philosophers, see O’Neill (Citation2005). As O’Neill notes, a large contributing factor to the exclusion of women from the philosophical canon is the habit of ‘taking Kantianism as the culmination of early modern philosophy and as providing the project for all future philosophy inquiry,’ one that viewed ‘treatments of ‘the woman question’ as a precritical issue of purely anthropological interest. So, by the nineteenth century, much of the published material by women once deemed philosophical no longer seemed so’ (186). O’Neill gives a useful survey of progress made from 1992 to 2005 in producing more and better editions of texts by women philosophers. For a more recent assessment of ways to overcome the hold of the figures who have tended to dominate the main canon of modern philosophy, see Shapiro (Citation2016).