The Advancement of Learning Page #42

The Advancement of Learning, published by Francis Bacon in 1605, is a foundational text in the history of science and philosophy. In this work, Bacon advocates for empirical research and the systematic organization of knowledge, laying the groundwork for the scientific method. The book critiques existing scholarly practices and proposes a new approach to learning based on observation and experimentation. It marks a significant shift towards modern scientific inquiry.

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persons of the sophists, but even in Socrates himself, who, professing to
affirm nothing, but to infirm that which was affirmed by another, hath
exactly expressed all the forms of objection, fallace, and redargution.
And although we have said that the use of this doctrine is for
redargution, yet it is manifest the degenerate and corrupt use is for
caption and contradiction, which passeth for a great faculty, and no
doubt is of very great advantage, though the difference be good which was
made between orators and sophisters, that the one is as the greyhound,
which hath his advantage in the race, and the other as the hare, which
hath her advantage in the turn, so as it is the advantage of the weaker
creature.

(7) But yet further, this doctrine of elenches hath a more ample latitude
and extent than is perceived; namely, unto divers parts of knowledge,
whereof some are laboured and other omitted.  For first, I conceive
(though it may seem at first somewhat strange) that that part which is
variably referred, sometimes to logic, sometimes to metaphysic, touching
the common adjuncts of essences, is but an elenche; for the great
sophism of all sophisms being equivocation or ambiguity of words and
phrase, specially of such words as are most general and intervene in
every inquiry, it seemeth to me that the true and fruitful use (leaving
vain subtleties and speculations) of the inquiry of majority, minority,
priority, posteriority, identity, diversity, possibility, act, totality,
parts, existence, privation, and the like, are but wise cautions against
ambiguities of speech.  So, again, the distribution of things into
certain tribes, which we call categories or predicaments, are but
cautions against the confusion of definitions and divisions.

(8) Secondly, there is a seducement that worketh by the strength of the
impression, and not by the subtlety of the illaqueation—not so much
perplexing the reason, as overruling it by power of the imagination.  But
this part I think more proper to handle when I shall speak of rhetoric.

(9) But lastly, there is yet a much more important and profound kind of
fallacies in the mind of man, which I find not observed or inquired at
all, and think good to place here, as that which of all others
appertaineth most to rectify judgment, the force whereof is such as it
doth not dazzle or snare the understanding in some particulars, but doth
more generally and inwardly infect and corrupt the state thereof.  For
the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass,
wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true
incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of
superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.  For this
purpose, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us
by the general nature of the mind, beholding them in an example or two;
as first, in that instance which is the root of all superstition, namely,
that to the nature of the mind of all men it is consonant for the
affirmative or active to affect more than the negative or privative.  So
that a few times hitting or presence countervails ofttimes failing or
absence, as was well answered by Diagoras to him that showed him in
Neptune’s temple the great number of pictures of such as had escaped
shipwreck, and had paid their vows to Neptune, saying, “Advise now, you
that think it folly to invocate Neptune in tempest.”  “Yea, but,” saith
Diagoras, “where are they painted that are drowned?”  Let us behold it in
another instance, namely, that the spirit of man, being of an equal and
uniform substance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature a greater
equality and uniformity than is in truth.  Hence it cometh that the
mathematicians cannot satisfy themselves except they reduce the motions
of the celestial bodies to perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines, and
labouring to be discharged of eccentrics.  Hence it cometh that whereas
there are many things in Nature as it were monodica, sui juris, yet
the cogitations of man do feign unto them relatives, parallels, and
conjugates, whereas no such thing is; as they have feigned an element of
fire to keep square with earth, water, and air, and the like.  Nay, it is
not credible, till it be opened, what a number of fictions and fantasies
the similitude of human actions and arts, together with the making of man
communis mensura, have brought into natural philosophy; not much better
than the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and
solitary monks, and the opinion of Epicurus, answerable to the same in
heathenism, who supposed the gods to be of human shape.  And, therefore,
Velleius the Epicurean needed not to have asked why God should have
adorned the heavens with stars, as if He had been an ædilis, one that
should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays.  For if that great
Work-master had been of a human disposition, He would have cast the stars
into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders like the frets in the
roofs of houses; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square, or
triangle, or straight line, amongst such an infinite number, so differing
a harmony there is between the spirit of man and the spirit of Nature.

(10) Let us consider again the false appearances imposed upon us by every
man’s own individual nature and custom in that feigned supposition that
Plato maketh of the cave; for certainly if a child were continued in a
grot or cave under the earth until maturity of age, and came suddenly
abroad, he would have strange and absurd imaginations.  So, in like
manner, although our persons live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits
are included in the caves of our own complexions and customs, which
minister unto us infinite errors and vain opinions if they be not
recalled to examination.  But hereof we have given many examples in one
of the errors, or peccant humours, which we ran briefly over in our first
book.

(11) And lastly, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed
upon us by words, which are framed and applied according to the conceit
and capacities of the vulgar sort; and although we think we govern our
words, and prescribe it well loquendum ut vulgus sentiendum ut
sapientes, yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar’s bow, do shoot
back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and
pervert the judgment.  So as it is almost necessary in all controversies
and disputations to imitate the wisdom of the mathematicians, in setting
down in the very beginning the definitions of our words and terms, that
others may know how we accept and understand them, and whether they
concur with us or no.  For it cometh to pass, for want of this, that we
are sure to end there where we ought to have begun, which is, in
questions and differences about words.  To conclude, therefore, it must

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