hello :) I am new in this reddit, I am looking for good sources for information about Francis Bacon, since I have an exhibition for my logic class :D. could you link me through good info?

I'm looking a link where I can watch free this movie LOVE IS THE DEVIL

I am looking for the source of the quote "Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us" that is thought to be said by Francis Bacon - can anyone tell me if he actually said this and if so where?

This set of class notes is not yet finished.

III

i. Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit or diminution of credit that groweth unto learning from learned men themselves, which commonly cleaveth fastest: it is either from their fortune, or from their manners, or from the nature of their studies. For the first, it is not in their power; and the second is accidental; the third only is proper to be handled: but because we are not in hand with true measure, but with popular estimation and conceit, it is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or condition of learned men, are either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness of employments.

ii. Concerning want, and that it is the case of learned men usually to begin with little, and not to grow rich so fast as other men, by reason they convert not their labours chiefly to lucre and increase, it were good to leave the commonplace in commendation of povery to some friar to handle, to whom much was attributed by Machiavel in this point when he said, “That the kingdom of the clergy had been long before at an end, if the reputation and reverence towards the poverty of friars had not borne out the scandal of the superfluities and excesses of bishops and prelates.” So a man might say that the felicity and delicacy of princes and great persons had long since turned to rudeness and barbarism, if the poverty of learning had not kept up civility and honour of life; but without any such advantages, it is worthy the observation what a reverent and honoured thing poverty of fortune was for some ages in the Roman state, which nevertheless was a state without paradoxes. For we see what Titus Livius saith in his introduction: Caeterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam sero avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint; nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit. We see likewise, after that the state of Rome was not itself, but did degenerate, how that person that took upon him to be counsellor to Julius Caesar after his victory where to begin his restoration of the state, maketh it of all points the most summary to take away the estimation of wealth: Verum haec et omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniae desinent; si neque magistratus, neque alia vulgo cupienda, venalia erunt. To conclude this point: as it was truly said that Paupertas est virtutis fortuna, though sometimes it come from vice, so it may be fitly said that, though some times it may proceed from misgovernment and accident. Surely Solomon hath pronounced it both in censure, Qui festinat ad divitias non erit insons; and in precept, “Buy the truth, and sell it not; and so of wisdom and knowledge;” judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means. And as for the privateness or obscureness (as it may be in vulgar estimation accounted) of life of contemplative men, it is a theme so common to extol a private life, not taxed with sensuality and sloth, in comparison and to the disadvantage of a civil life, for safety, liberty, pleasure, and dignity, or at least freedom from indignity, as no man handleth it but handleth it well; such a consonancy it hath to men’s conceits in the expressing, and to men’s consents in the allowing. This only I will add, that learned men forgotten in states and not living in the eyes of men, are like the images of Cassius and Brutus in the funeral of Junia, of which, not being represented as many others were, Tacitus saith, Eo ipso praefulgebant quod non visebantur.

iii. And for meanness of employment, that which is most traduced to contempt is that the government of youth is commonly allotted to them; which age, because it is the age of least authority, it is transferred to the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But how unjust this traducement is (if you will reduce things from popularity of opinion to measure of reason) may appear in that we see men are more curious what they put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned; and what mould they lay about a young plant than about a plant corroborate; so as this weakest terms and times of all things use to have the best applications and helps. And will you hearken to the Hebrew rabbins? “Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:” say they, youth is the worthier age, for that visions are nearer apparitions of God than dreams? And let it be noted that howsoever the condition of life of pedantes hath been scorned upon theatres, as the ape of tyranny; and that the modern looseness or negligence hath taken no due regard to the choice of schoolmasters and tutors; yet the ancient wisdom of the best times did always make a just complaint, that states were too busy with their laws and too negligent in point of education: which excellent part of ancient discipline hath been in some sort revived of late times by the colleges of the Jesuits; of whom, although in regard of their superstition I may say, Quo meliores, eo deteriores; yet in regard of this, and some other points concerning human learning and moral matters, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy Pharnabazus, Talis quum sis, utunam noster esses. And that much touching the discredits drawn from the fortunes of learned men.

iv. As touching the manners of learned men, it is a thing personal and individual: and no doubt there be amongst them, as in other professions, of all temperatures: but yet so as it is not without truth which is said, that Abeunt studua in mores, studies have an influence and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in them.

v. But upon an attentive and indifferent review, I for my part cannot find any disgrace to learning can proceed from the manners of learned men; not inherent to them as they are learned; except it be a fault (which was the supposed fault of Demosthenes, Cicero, Cato II., Seneca, and many more) that because the times they read of are commonly better than the times they live in, and the duties taught better than the duties practised, they contend sometimes too far to bring things to perfection, and to reduce the corruption of manners to honesty of precepts or examples of too great height. And yet hereof they have caveats enough in their own walks. For Solon, when he was asked whether he had given his citizens the best laws, answered wisely, “Yea, of such as they would receive:” and Plato, finding that his own heart could not agree with the corrupt manners of his country, refused to bear place or office, saying, “That a man’s country was to be used as his parents were, that is, with humble persuasions, and not with contestations.” And Caesar’s counsellor put in the same caveat, Non ad vetera instituta revocans quae jampridem corruptis moribus ludibrio sunt; and Cicero noteth this error directly in Cato II. when he writes to his friend Atticus, Cato optime sentit, sed nocet interdum reipublicae; loquitur enim tanquam in republica Platonis, non tanquam in faece Romuli. And the same Cicero doth excuse and expound the philosophers for going too far and being too exact in their prescripts when he saith, Isti ipse praeceptores virtutis et magistri videntur fines officiorum paulo longius quam natura vellet protulisse, ut cum ad ultimum animo contendissemus, ibi tamen, ubi oportet, consisteremus: and yet himself might have said, Monitis sum minor ipse meis; for it was his own fault, though not in so extreme a degree.

vi. Another fault likewise much of this kind hath been incident to learned men, which is, that they have esteemed the preservation, good, and honour of their countries or masters before their own fortunes or safeties. For so saith Demosthenes unto the Athenians: “If it please you to note it, my counsels unto you are not such whereby I should grow great amongst you, and you become little amongst the Grecians; but they be of that nature as they are sometimes not good for me to give, but are always good for you to follow.” And so Seneca, after he had consecrated that Quinquennium Neronis to the eternal glory of learned governors, held on his honest and loyal course of good and free counsel after his master grew extremely corrupt in his government. Neither can this point otherwise be, for learning endueth men’s minds with a true sense of the frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the dignity of their soul and vocation, so that it is impossible for them to esteem that any greatness of their own fortune can be a true or worthy end of their being and ordainment, and therefore are desirous to give their account to God, and so likewise to their masters under God (as kings and the states that they serve) in those words, Ecce tibi lucrefeci, and not Ecce mihi lucrefeci; whereas the corrupter sort of mere politiques, that have not their thoughts established by learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into universality, do refer all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes, never caring in all tempests what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune; whereas men that feel the weight of duty and know the limits of self-love use to make good their places and duties, though with peril; and if they stand in seditious and violent alterations, it is rather the reverence which many times both adverse parts do give to honesty, than any versatile advantage of their own carriage. But for this point of tender sense and fast obligation of duty which learning doth endue the mind withal, howsoever fortune may tax it, and many in the depth of their corrupt principles may despise it, yet it will receive an open allowance, and therefore needs the less disproof or excuse.

vii. Another fault incident commonly to learned men, which may be more properly defended than truly denied, is that they fail sometimes in applying themselves to particular persons, which want of exact application ariseth from two causes — the one, because the largeness of their mind can hardly confine itself to dwell in the exquisite observation or examination of the nature and customs of one person, for it is a speech for a lover, and not for a wise man, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. Nevertheless I shall yield that he that cannot contract the sight of his mind as well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty. But there is a second cause, which is no inability, but a rejection upon choice and judgment. For the honest and just bounds of observation by one person upon another extend no further but to understand him sufficiently, whereby not to give him offence, or whereby to be able to give him faithful counsel, or whereby to stand upon reasonable guard and caution in respect of a man’s self. But to be speculative into another man to the end to know how to work him, or wind him, or govern him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and ingenuous; which as in friendship it is want of integrity, so towards princes or superiors is want of duty. For the custom of the Levant, which is that subjects do forbear to gaze or fix their eyes upon princes, is in the outward ceremony barbarous, but the moral is good; for men ought not, by cunning and bent observations, to pierce and penetrate into the hearts of kings, which the Scripture hath declared to be inscrutable.

viii. There is yet another fault (with which I will conclude this part) which is often noted in learned men, that they do many times fail to observe decency and discretion in their behaviour and carriage, and commit errors in small and ordinary points of action, so as the vulgar sort of capacities do make a judgment of them in greater matters by that which they find wanting in them in smaller. But this consequence doth oft deceive men, for which I do refer them over to that which was said by Themistocles, arrogantly and uncivilly being applied to himself out of his own mouth, but, being applied to the general state of this question, pertinently and justly, when, being invited to touch a lute, he said, “He could not fiddle, but he could make a small town a great state.” So no doubt many may be well seen in the passages of government and policy which are to seek in little and punctual occasions. I refer them also to that which Plato said of his master Socrates, whom he compared to the gallipots of apothecaries, which on the outside had apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign and precious liquors and confections; acknowledging that, to an external report, he was not without superficial levities and deformities, but was inwardly replenished with excellent virtues and powers. And so much touching the point of manners of learned men.

ix. But in the meantime I have no purpose to give allowance to some conditions and courses base and unworthy, wherein divers professors of learning have wronged themselves and gone too far; such as were those trencher philosophers which in the later age of the Roman state were usually in the houses of great persons, being little better than solemn parasites, of which kind, Lucian maketh a merry description of the philosopher that the great lady took to ride with her in her coach, and would needs have him carry her little dog, which he doing officiously and yet uncomely, the page scoffed and said, “That he doubted the philosopher of a Stoic would turn to be a Cynic.” But, above all the rest, this gross and palpable flattery whereunto many not unlearned have abased and abused their wits and pens, turning (as Du Bartas saith) Hecuba into Helena, and Faustina into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price and estimation of learning. Neither is the modern dedication of books and writings, as to patrons, to be commended, for that books (such as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons but truth and reason. And the ancient custom was to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or to entitle the books with their names; or if to kings and great persons, it was to some such as the argument of the book was fit and proper for; but these and the like courses may deserve rather reprehension than defence.

continued here

I'm going to just continue our readings in both books at the same time. At some point we will have supplementary texts from other books to discuss, and we will eventually be adding that second work by Bacon (all works are linked to in the side-bar).

We have already seen some tension between science and established powers, and between science and theocracy. Now we will get to look at some tension between science and the affairs of state. What we might term bureaucracy, or domestic exercise of state policy.

We might also discern another conflict between the passionate pursuit of knowledge through scientific principles and (something I know all of you are affected by, and many of your are passionate about) -- technology.

Science vs. Technology?

Aren't science and technology best friends, or something like that?

The tension between science and technology, in my view, exists and can be seen in plenty of places. Take for instance whenever someone argues against the spending of money on scientific endeavors with some objection like: "what will that do for us?" Why should we pursue particle physics, say, if we already know far too much about subatomic particles? Why ought we to fund a space program, how will that help us?

the very natures of these questions reveal that desire for an easier life sometimes makes one antagonistic to a pure pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

(not to mention the ridiculousness of this view, science advances technology usually by revolutionizing it. Technicians to the same old things again and again, applying the scientific principles they have been given to solve new problems. Science attempts to understand the world (in it's specific and somewhat limited way) and when it does so hands all at once a bunch of new tools to the technicians that they never would have dreamed imaginable. A scientists says: "I want to understand electrons" a technician gets a new machine in their hospital which gives a picture of a bone still encased in flesh. The intention wasn't to create new technology for hospitals, it was to understand the nature of all the matter around us. The by-product was new technology. It seems as if those who want new technology will have to tolerate those who want to do science for its own sake, that's their only real hope of getting anywhere.)

Let's see:

II

I. And as for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics, they be of this nature: that learning doth soften men’s minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert men’s dispositions for matter of government and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by variety of reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of rules and axioms, or too immoderate and overweening by reason of the greatness of examples, or too incompatible and differing from the times by reason of the dissimilitude of examples; or at least, that it doth divert men’s travails from action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness; and that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every man is more ready to argue than to obey and execute.

I want to look at each of these objections individually, I think that there is some merit in at least one of them.

They seem to fall into two categories (and it is obviously a rhetorical device Bacon is using here by putting the contrasting objections one after the other -- "it is variously said that science may make men disinterested in the affairs of state, and if it doesn't do that it is sure to make them far too headstrong in the affairs of state".):

• The promotion of science is not a good thing for the state because it discourages men from obedient action in two ways: Making them too critical, so they are not apt to obey orders; or two, making them soft, they just want to lie around looking through glasses or something rather than concerning themselves with matters of foreign policy.

In order to understand this first category of objections it might be worth thinking about what nobility meant in these times. While most people were (perhaps are) preoccupied with daily concerns about nourishment and basic necessities, human beings with a surplus of these things (other animals often just spend any "extra time" they may happen to have sleeping) tend to try to find projects with which to occupy themselves. In the courts adherents to one set of preoccupations might quarrel with the proponents of another.

Remember that Bacon's view is that the scientific project is a personal one. He dedicated this book to the king as a tribute to his great character that he would want to understand the world better for its own sake. and makes the assumption that that is all the scientific project will be good for. (he puts it in direct distinction from other projects which might advance the state.) One doesn't engage in science in order to gain power over nature and therefore over one's enemies, one engages in science simply to understand the world better.

This means that the first set of objections are to those who might consider this project as a waste of time. Why not think about what right economic or military positions one might have in order to increase the power of the kind rather than wasting one's time in a lab self-indulgently doing experiments to no end?

• On the opposite side, science might make men too headstrong, feeling like they have knowledge of certain rules and axioms, they may behave in a grotesque manner (not have the entire picture).

In my view, this is an extremely prescient and worthwhile objection to keep in mind. Think of all the false "scientific" projects in which men have engaged. Was the eugenics of the Nazi era a necessary outcome of the scientific project? How might we take this objection seriously so as to avoid thinking we know things that we don't know? How might we keep safe this scientific project from becoming the endorsement tool for a regime what wishes to engage in detestable political projects? These are questions I feel are of the utmost importance to keep in mind when engaging in science, especially a phenomenon worth looking at which I will call "politicized science".

There are many examples which come to mind. No matter your position on the current state of "climate science", one has to admit that there have been many "climate sciences" which were just plain wrong and which led to unnecessary political movements, not all of them harmless.

What cultural impact has Freud had which extends beyond his legitimate scientific contributions (whatever you regard those to be)?

While it is untrue that Hitler relied upon Darwinian evolution to support his final solution (Darwin was alike banned from Nazi Germany along with Freud and Marx), Eugenics and social Darwinism as understood by the Allies was used to make excuse for and find compromise with Hitler's programs.

One of the readers of this set of notes here is a Doctor who has told me about his battles with the established political bureaucracy in his field and how one of the standard practices of his field has been shown in study after study to be extremely detrimental to the lives and health of small children, and yet it is still being practiced because the principles of science are not yet able to overcome this establishment. (I would love to convince him to share his thoughts on this subject and his experiences fighting this situation, and his experiences teaching young doctors how to think scientifically and critically as opposed to just doing what they are told in a future post, I will work on getting either a video interview with him or a text version where these ideas can be shared because they are fascinating and would contribute directly a great deal to our discussions.)

In any case, I feel as though this objection is not one to be dismissed, but one to be taken very seriously by anyone who wants to have a career doing real science. You must ask yourself all the time if you aren't being fooled, so that you can keep yourself from fooling others.

While we look at the principles of science set out by Francis Bacon, we will see, I think, that these principles (peer-review, and the like) are more than enough to ensure that good science is done, the problem, I feel, with "politicized science" is that it directly makes war against the force of these principles, and leaves us with just lab-coats and "authority" instead of truth.

let's move on:

Out of this conceit Cato, surnamed the Censor, one of the wisest men indeed that ever lived, when Carneades the philosopher came in embassage to Rome, and that the young men of Rome began to flock about him, being allured with the sweetness and majesty of his eloquence and learning, gave counsel in open senate that they should give him his despatch with all speed, lest he should infect and enchant the minds and affections of the youth, and at unawares bring in an alteration of the manners and customs of the state. Out of the same conceit or humour did Virgil, turning his pen to the advantage of his country and the disadvantage of his own profession, make a kind of separation between policy and government, and between arts and sciences, in the verses so much renowned, attributing and challenging the one to the Romans, and leaving and yielding the other to the Grecians:

Tu regere imperio popules, Romane, memento,

Hae tibi erunt artes, &c.

Virgil, Aeneid, Bk. vi. 851: "Roman, remember that you will rule peoples with sovereign sway; these will be your arts."

So likewise we see that Anytus, the accuser of Socrates, laid it as an article of charge and accusation against him, that he did, with the variety and power of his discourses and disputatious, withdraw young men from due reverence to the laws and customs of their country, and that he did profess a dangerous and pernicious science, which was to make the worse matter seem the better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence and speech.

ii. But these and the like imputations have rather a countenance of gravity than any ground of justice: for experience doth warrant that, both in persons and in times, there hath been a meeting and concurrence in learning and arms, flourishing and excelling in the same men and the same ages. For as ‘for men, there cannot be a better nor the like instance as of that pair, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, the Dictator; whereof the one was Aristotle’s scholar in philosophy, and the other was Cicero’s rival in eloquence; or if any man had rather call for scholars that were great generals, than generals that were great scholars, let him take Epaminondas the Theban, or Xenophon the Athenian; whereof the one was the first that abated the power of Sparta, and the other was the first that made way to the overthrow of the monarchy of Persia. And this concurrence is yet more visible in times than in persons, by how much an age is greater object than a man. For both in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Graecia, and Rome, the same times that are most renowned for arms are, likewise, most admired for learning, so that the greatest authors and philosophers, and the greatest captains and governors, have lived in the same ages. Neither can it otherwise he: for as in man the ripeness of strength of the body and mind cometh much about an age, save that the strength of the body cometh somewhat the more early, so in states, arms and learning, whereof the one correspondeth to the body, the other to the soul of man, have a concurrence or near sequence in times.

Plato answered the same question in The Republic. When one of his interlocutors suggested that the learned man might have the most power and therefore be the most dangerous, Socrates (Plato's character and somewhat mouthpiece in this book) said that, "yes, this is true. The most educated man is in a position of being the most evil in that he can effectively carry out the most evil because he knows better the true nature of things." (paraphrase from memory).

• Is there anyone here who finds merit in this way of thinking? Should we be cautious or even suspicious of learned scientists knowing that they are also mammals like the rest of us and susceptible to impulses to wickedness?

continued here

16 days ago I ended a set of notes by saying I was going to run to work and "be right back".

Let's just continue here:

The last thing we said was that the writers of this book [we are still discussing "Leviathan and the Air-pump" by Shapin and Schaffer, one of the texts we will be looking at besides Bacon's works] proposed that other scholars have disregarded Hobbes's criticisms of Boyle (and his scientific project) by presuming Hobbes to just be "too old" or ignorant, or they said he based his opposition on a fundamental misunderstanding of Boyle's ideas.

Since our was of proceeding will dispense with the category of "misunderstanding" and the asymmetries associated with it, some words on method are indicated here. (p.12)

• Their purpose will be to describe and explain, not to evaluate.

• But: Some evaluation will force itself on us.

• We will use the "stranger's perspective" mentioned earlier. (That is, we will attempt to drop the assumptions of what is right and wrong about the discussion based on popular modern assumptions, and instead look for merit in both sides of the debate.)

This is because our main task will be to ask the question:

why experimental practices were accounted proper and how such practices were considered to yield reliable knowledge. (p. 13, emphasis in original)

In order to do this they will attempt to adopt a "member's account" (as opposed to a "stranger's perspective") of Hobbes's anti-experimentalism. (In other words, they want to assume the validity of pre-scientific assumptions about knowledge and how to acquire it in order to understand Hobbes's criticisms and therefore better understand why those who have adopted Boyle's project of scientific experimentalism (both then and now) have done so.

Pretty straight forward project plan, there is the question of whether or not it is going to be possible for the authors to succeed in adopting a different set of subjective presumptions, but that is their plan.

That is to say, we want to put ourselves in a position where objections to the experimental programme seem plausible, sensible, and rational. (p.13)

Basically, they are going to try to find legitimacy in criticisms of the scientific project in order to better understand why it did (maybe should) win this dialectical test. (The more I type about this class, the more the suggestion presents itself to me that I ought to combine this project with the Nietzsche class (which has been going on much longer, link), because Nietzsche also presents us with a completely different set of criticisms of the scientific project which would be worth looking at in supplement to the project of the authors of the book we are looking at here. I think I'll do this soon.)

Our goal is to break down the aura of self-evidence surrounding the experimental way of producing knowledge, and "charitable interpretation" of the opposition to experimentalism is a valuable means of accomplishing this.

Of course, our ambition is not to rewrite the clear judgment of history: Hobbes's views found little support in the English natural philosophical community.

Yet we want to show that there was nothing self-evident or inevitable about the series of historical judgements in that context which yielded a natural philosophical consensus in favour of the experimental programme. Given other circumstances bearing upon that philosophical community, Hobbes's views might well ahve found a different reception.

They were not widely credited or believed--but they were believable; they were not counted to be correct--but there was nothing inherent in them that prevented a different evaluation.

(all p.13, Paragraph breaks were mine)

They want to understand why Boyle won out in this debate.

An example of the kinds of questions we will be looking at: We are going to look at: how it is that people came to regard an experimental matter of fact to come about? What was it that made the community begin to regard certain methods as capable of producing truth? What kind of truth? That sort of thing. (we can see that this book is directly analyzing all of the questions about "how to think scientifically" that we are hoping to look at in this class, that is their main project.)

This book is worth buying and reading. I'm not going to be able to type the whole thing out, nor am I going to be able to share all of the ideas in it in paraphrase form. There are some more interesting comments on the methods and approaches that the author's intend to employ in the book on the next few pages. For those of you interested in the fine points of Wittgenstein's notions of a "form of life" or "language-games", I suggest you buy the book.

They are going to look at the relationships between the adoption and evolution of these scientific principles and society in general (Restoration society), as well as the society of the scientific community as it began to take shape.

I personally have some reservations about the possibility of engaging in this sort of sociological approach to understanding knowledge (except for the fact that that is what this entire class is attempting to do, I guess I just have reservations when other people are doing it?) In any case, it is something to take seriously and slowly and gradually. My desire is to keep these reservations in mind, and move forward to see what the authors have to say. Instead of getting bogged down in discussions of possibility for this kind of project, let's just get on with it and have those criticisms surface when they do, while we attempt to accomplish something in this way.

Another plug for the book: The authors have a very beautiful intellectual illustration in the next few pages that I won't be able to include here. (It's too tangential to our purposes.--They make an analogy between themselves writing about science, and an historian of battles who has never been in battle (Keegan's confession)), worth reading.

The last few pages give an outline of the rest of the chapters. (not going to type it all out here, but it is helpful)

I'll just give you this (on the next chapter):

we examine the form of life that Boyle proposed for experimental philosophy.

We identify the technical, literary, and social practices whereby experimental matters of fact were to be generated, validated, and formed into bases for consensus.

We pay special attention to the operation of the air-pump and the means by which experiments employing this device could be made to yield what counted as unassailable knowledge.

We discuss the social and linguistic practices Boyle recommended to experimentalists; we show how these were important constitutive elements int he making of matters of fact and in protecting such facts from items of knowledge that were thought to generate discord and conflict. Our task here is to identify the conventions by which experimental knowledge was to be produced. (p. 18-9, paragraph breaks not in original.)

This book is exceptional, and I certainly recommend purchasing it, here or here. 9for free here. The authors found that certain schools of thought, developed at the time of the rise of modern science (and critical of it), have been so neglected as to not have even been translated out of the original Latin... so one of the two authors includes his translation of Hobbes's "Physical Dialogue" as an appendix to the book. Does an academic adventure get anymore exciting?!

I won't be able to retype the entire text in this class (for one thing, I think you ought to buy a copy, for another it is too long to retype)

But I will summarize it and type excerpts:

1

Understanding Experiment

Our subject is experiment. We want to understand the nature and status of experimental practices and their intellectual products. These are the questions to which we seek answers: What is an experiment? How is an experiment performed? What are the means by which experiments can be said to produce matters of fact, and what is the relationship between experimental facts and explanatory constructs? How is a successful experiment identified, and how is success distinguished from experimental failure? Behind this series of particular questions lie more general ones: Why does one do experiments in order to arrive at scientific truth? Is experiment a privileged means of arriving at consensually agreed knowledge of nature, or are other means possible? What recommends the experimental way in science over alternatives to it?

We want our answers to be historical in character.

-- (p.3, emphasis in original.)

So they intend to look at historical examples, specifically Boyle.

What can they add to what has already been done on this subject?

They intend to look at the subject as if they are not a product of its success. To "play the stranger" to scientific culture.

We need to play the stranger, not to be the stranger. A genuine stranger is simply ignorant. We wish to adopt a calculated and an informed suspension of our taken-for-granted perceptions of experimental practice and its products. ... We want to approach "our" culture of experiment as Alfred Schutz suggests a stranger approaches an alien society, "not [as] a shelter but [as] a field of adventure, not a matter of course but a questionable topic of investigation, not an instrument for disentangling problematic situations but a problematic situation itself and one hard to master." If we pretend to be a stranger to experimental culture, we can seek to appropriate one great advantage the stranger has over the member in explaining the beliefs and practices of a specific culture: the stranger is in a position to know that there are alternatives to those beliefs and practices.

-- (p.6, emphasis in original)

How might we do this? they ask. The answer: look for controversy in the history of science. But don't just take the other's side, speak for yourself and find the good points in both sides.

The controversy with which we are concerned took place in England in the 1660s and early 1670s. The protagonists were Robert Boyle (1627-1691) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

-- (p. 7)

Boyle was the "major practitioner of systematic experimentation and ... propagandists for the value of experimental practices in natural philosophy."

-- (Ibid.)

Hobbes was Boyles "most vigorous local opponent, seeking to undermine the particular claims and interpretations produced by Boyle's researches and, crucially, mobilizing powerful arguments why the experimental programme could not produce the sort of knowledge Boyle recommended."

-- (Ibid.)

Points which make this controversy interesting:

• Hobbes is long forgotten to be a natural philosopher

Hobbes is remembered as an "ethical, political, psychological, and metaphysical philosopher; the unity of those concerns with the philosophy of nature, so insisted upon by Hobbes has been split up and the science dismissed from consideration."

-- (p.8)

Kargon suggests that one of the reasons for the neglect of Hobbes by historians of science lies in the fact that he disagreed with the hero Boyle and, accordingly, suffered ostracism from the Royal Society of London.

-- (Ibid.)

They suggest that historians have neglected this aspect of Hobbes's thinking because he was considered decisively to have lost all of his scientific debates with Boyle.

historians have been content to align themselves with the victorious Boyle and his associates, to repeat Boyle's judgement on Hobbes's text, and to keep silent about what Hobbes actually had to say.

-- (p.10)

The book then offers a lot of examples of historians explicitly disregarding Hobbes's criticisms of the experimental method.

Pervasively, historians have drawn upon the notion of "misunderstanding" (and the reasons for it) as the basis of their causal accounting and dismissal of Hobbes's position.

-- (p.12)

They (those who dismiss Hobbes's criticisms) simply say that Hobbes was too old, or too dedicated an Aristotelian (which the authors say is an error; that Hobbes was by no means a dedicated Aristotelian) to understand why he had a problem with the new rising scientific experimental methods.

... I have to go take a shower and get ready for work... will finish this chapter later.

Besides the two works of Francis Bacon, i think that this book will be helpful for this class:

• Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

• link

I am going to be reading through it and adding to the classes from its text.

Unlike the classes on Zarathustra, and the Francis Bacon texts in this class, i won't be able to publish the entire text of this book. You can buy it in the link in the sidebar, or the one in this post for around $10 shipping included.

I'll probably just take notes on the chapters that are relevant and publish them in this class.

It would be good to get the book, if you want to get the most out of the class.

• how I heard about this book

thanks.

I've been pretty ill the last few days... I have another class and some comments to answer. I've been thinking about them, but I don't have the energy right now.

I saw this guy on FOX news this morning.

He was a neuroscientists who had a NDE.

He was explaining what the experiences for the dead children and their killer would be like.

(spoiler alert: Yes, the kids will remember everything, but it won't hurt in the same way as when you are alive. -- the killer will get to re-live all his experiences but from the view-points of his victims, except that it will be much more agonizing... so, there's that.)

Anyone want to discuss him?

Because I don't want to take up time when we should be looking at the texts instead spending my time explaining, throat-clearing, and apologizing for what i have to say on this topic, I will offer a separate class just dealing with this difficult topic. (Difficult because of the passionate views on both sides.)

You certainly don't have to agree with me on any aspect of what I think (in fact, your disagreements, are extremely welcome in the comments), but I ought to be upfront with my views in order to make it easier for you to disagree.

Over the last two hundred years, science has discovered many truths which our societies have had a more than average difficulty with accepting.

Darwin's Theory of speciation by natural selection acting on randomly varying, self-replicating populations is just one of those ideas. There was a real and serious, long and grueling, series of scientific debates on this issue in the scientific communities, in which both sides were sometimes arguing scientifically. (at a time when the relevant, and necessary, evidence to settle the debate was still to be discovered.) We have the texts of these debates. This is one reason why this subject will be useful for the purposes of our class.

This scientific debate isn't the only debate over evolution. There are legal debates, still going on, which help to demonstrate the tensions between scientific endeavors and political authorities. We have already seen in the preface of Francis Bacon's "Advancement of Learning" that science was born in these tensions.

It is true that there are, in our societies today:

• scientific arguments for evolution which are easy to look up and a joy to study.

• non-scientific supports to evolution; these will be convenient to look at as we try to specifically define the rules of what makes science, science.

• non-scientific attacks on evolution, which will provide us with important examples of ways in which people try to look scientific without actually following the principles of true science.

• scientific arguments against Darwin's theories and its explanatory powers. While these arguments do not cause me, personally, to give up my affirmation of Darwin's ideas; they do exist, and are very worth looking at. No theory has everything all its own way, and true scientific thinking is always willing to look at any evidence which might challenge our views of nature.

I imagine that the last of these four points is the one that will be getting the most disagreement, but I have looked very seriously through much creationist literature (both Christian and Islamic) in search of respectable arguments. While most of what these camps produce is nothing more than propaganda (often approaching hysteria), there are occasionally germs of a point, and i am keenly interested in these points because of my love of the dialectical process which helps to power scientific progress, a process which requires two sides.

I won't apologize for this any longer, unless there are outraged questions in the comments section.

Science, just like other great projects of culture and the humanities, is an ongoing conversation between the greatest interlocutors our species has recorded.

Conversations require two sides to be interesting.

This does not mean that both sides are just as likely to be true at the end of the conversation, but it means that the conversation is no longer able to continue if both sides agree.

Beware the sound of one hand clapping.

We gain altitude in these conversations by having two sides push against one another (like the wings of a bird).

This is why in the Q and A of debates on any subject, a good questioner will often ask one or both sides what possible evidence could make them change their minds.

I'll leave it there, for now. If you are under the conviction that anything which might be presented to you will only confirm your view, you are most likely not thinking scientifically. more conversation on "falsifiability" at the end of this class

In this class we will be trying to clearly define a number of ideas. Among these are such questions as:

• What are the requirements of a truly scientific test (experiment)?

• What is a scientific argument?

• What is a scientific theory?

• What qualifies as a scientific explanation of a phenomenon?

In this class, I thought I might take a break from our examination of the texts to attempt to find an answer to the last of these questions. We will periodically treat other questions like this in the rest of this class.

Please help us to define these ideas as a group through discussion and debate, you might start by pointing out any weaknesses you see in the reasoning I will present here:

Let us first look at a philosophical definition of what an explanation is. Let's start here:

• An explanation (any explanation) of some phenomenon is nothing more than a description of that thing in terms other than the thing itself.

I think that if something does not meet the simple requirement of this definition, it does not really qualify as an "explanation" of anything, much less a scientific explanation.

Let us look at some examples.

Suppose you are walking through the woods with a good friend of yours whose opinions you respect, and you take notice; for the first time in your life, perhaps; of a flower. What is that!? you exclaim, and your friend tells you "That is called a flower." Knowing your friend to be passionate and talkative, you ask her: From whence, do you think, comes this thing called a 'flower'? Her response:

There are, living in the woods, many fairies of various powers and natures. Some of these are called "flower fairies". These fairies have, by their very natures, flower-like qualities and powers. They travel the woods and touch certain areas, imparting to those areas their own flower qualities. Just like water imparts its wetness nature to whatever it touches, and fire imparts its quality of heat, so these fairies are the full explanation of each and every manifestation of flowerness across which we may ever be lucky enough to come.

This is very beautiful, and perhaps poetic in a way, but it is not an explanation (according to the definition we have given above.) Because it relies on the term "flower" to appear to explain the existence of flowers.

Likewise, If I wanted to explain to you the origin of lightening, and I said: "There are always around us an almost infinite number of miniature, sometimes infinitesimally small, bolts of lightening that strike between smaller or larger distances. Sometimes, by chance, these bolts happen to all strike together in the same line, and so the conglomeration of many parts, themselves usually too small to be noticeable, by combining together become that larger phenomenon which we see and call a lightening bolt."

This is also not an explanation of the phenomenon of lightening, because I have used the phenomenon itself as a part of my explanation.

These might seem like silly mistakes, not worth delineating, but I have a third example which comes from a recently published (fairly popular) book I read a short while ago which argues for the existence of god. In this book, 'consciousness' is supposedly explained by the fact that god is conscious and therefore is all one needs to know to understand why consciousness might exist in the world.

It should be clear to you now that this is not an explanation of the phenomenon of consciousness, certainly not a scientific explanation, but in my view not an explanation at all. If one wishes to explain the phenomenon of consciousness (even one iteration of it--your own being the only one you can be close to sure exists in the first place), one cannot rely on consciousness itself as a part of the explanation. To do so is simply to push the question back to a much larger and more difficult question of where an even greater manifestation of the first question might have come from. Just like the "flower-fairies", we haven't explained a phenomenon by saying that there are larger, greater, or more difficult things of the same nature which explain the simpler ones--simpler things which we haven't yet been able to understand.

What these 'explanations' should really be called are "pseudo-explanations" or "posing-explanations" or some such thing, because they accomplish one function which explanations accomplish, and that is to get the listener to no longer be preoccupied by the question. But as we should be able to see now, they don't deserve to have this effect.

It might be possible to argue (perhaps even scientifically) that the question of consciousness is not one which can (or perhaps, should) be answered; but saying that there can be no explanation of something is not the same as explaining it. This is, in my view, an important distinction to keep in mind as we move along.

So let's look at some actual explanations. Before we move on to "scientific" explanations, I'd like to distinguish between what I would (for now) simply call: "good explanations" vs. "bad explanations". In this view:

• A good explanation is one which describes a phenomenon using terms that are simpler than the thing itself, a really good explanation will be able to describe a wide range of phenomenon in those same simple terms.

Now we are starting to get somewhere. If I want to describe lightening, and I start talking about electrons, you can immediately see that an understanding of electrons holds the possibility of describing a great many more phenomena, phenomena which look wildly different from the now relatively-simple lightening bolt, with the same simple terms.

There are some explanations which can meet our revised definition which are still not scientific.

Assignment: give an example of a "good explanation" (according to our definition) that doesn't fall into the "scientific explanation" category.

Scientific explanations still require a few more qualities.

• Scientific explanations must be empirically verifiable.

This is a trickier qualification than it may first appear. I hold that no scientific explanation can truly be verified at all! That is, we must always be open to an entirely new set of paradigms which better explain the phenomena we have already accounted for, and also make sense of anomalies--perhaps, anomalies yet to be discovered. In other words, we must always hold our most cherished ideas in an open hand, ready to discard them if better explanations come along, or even only if new, contradictory information comes our way.

"Verifiability", in this sense, doesn't mean that we prove through experiment that the explanation is true, but instead, that we show through experiment that the explanation predicts true events in the world.

Another qualification:

• Any "scientific explanation" must be, in principle, falsifiable.

It may seem unfair, but this use of the word "falsifiable", as opposed to the weak use of the word "verifiable" in our last qualification, is actually quite strong. This is to say that there must be some thing which might be demonstrated, which, if it were demonstrated, would mean that our theory is kaput. Find rabbit bones in pre-Cambrian rock and Darwin was wrong. That sort of thing. This is one of the qualifications which helps to eliminate conspiracy theories. (and is, in general, a good rule for philosophers, as well as scientists.)

Suppose, if you will, that you have another friend who believes that aliens are running the government. He has a lot of good reasons, he believes, in support of this idea, and he is such an intelligent friend that you feel you must take the notion seriously. The idea has been bothering you for some time, and as you think on it you are reminded of some recent world event you saw the news which makes it seem to you far less likely that he is correct. You share this observation of yours with him, and he immediately responds: "See! That's just what they want you to think!"

There is no way he could be wrong. Everything points to the rightness of his view. More importantly, Anything would point to the rightness of his view. It is this second part which reveals the poverty of his way of thinking.

Imagine you die and go to heaven, and Steve Jobs is waiting for you there with a very large I-heaven 2.0 tablet. This is just a giant screen which looks sort of like a white-board, but functions like an i-pad when you inquisitively go up to it and begin to touch its surface. He asks you to push a button and suddenly there are icons of about a dozen universes in front of you. you drag your finger across the screen left and right, and you just see more and more icons that all look pretty similar to one another. He tells you: "there are an infinite number of universes on this i-heaven-doo-hicky-thing-a-ma-bob. Can you find the one in which you lived?" Any one of the ideas that you had in your life that were NOT "falsifiable" will not be able to help you with this task. They don't distinguish between the world in which you live and any other world because any hypothetical bit of information which might exist would simply back it up. Hopefully this helps to illustrate the uselessness of ideas which are "falsifiable".

Just so this doesn't seem too fantastical of a conversation, there are many falsifiable ideas (ideas which are therefore devoid of any explanatory power) which preoccupy the minds of many people every day. Conspiracy theorists exist in larger numbers than you might expect, but the religious mind may be the worst proprietor of this sort of non-sense. "All things work together for good to them who love the lord and are called according to his purpose." OR "God is good and created a world which shows how good he is, but man sinned and brought badness and suffering and death into this world."

Let us look at the second one. There is nothing that you can look at which wouldn't be able to go into one of those two boxes. You see a sunrise, and you think: "Isn't god so good." A child dies and you think: "It's too bad that man messed everything up." The paradigms are not so much wrong as they are useless. You get a promotion just when you couldn't have needed the added income any more and: "all things work together for good..." you are overwhelmed with grief at the untimely loss of a loved one: "all things work together for good..."

These are ideas which are tenacious for reasons other than their connection to reality. They have no power to explain the world in which we live because they could hypothetically make sense of any possible event, not just the events which are actual.

Oddly enough, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection acting on randomly varying replicating populations (a theory which is very scientific, but by no means perfect) might, in the end, suffer some from this test. I wonder what Richard Dawkins would say to this question: "Is there some possibly existing species for which couldn't be found an evolutionary explanation for its origin?" (It is probably not good to bring up Darwin's theories for the first time in a negative way, especially since it stands as such a fine example of good science in almost every area, but there are some critical scientific questions which might be asked of it, and I feel this is a legitimate one.) [His answer would probably be something like: "If you could find a species which had a quality about it which couldn't have benefited it's ancestors in their fight for survival, then that species shouldn't exist and we would have a difficult time explaining it with our current understanding." BUT evolutionary scientists have been so imaginative in coming up with explanations for so many things, that this seems too close (in this one respect) to our conspiracy theorist having it both ways.] -- just to be a little clear on this, I think that Darwin's ideas are some of the most beautiful and scientific ideas our species has been lucky enough to come up with, but our scientific skepticism should strike whenever it can.

So, what do we have so far:

• A "good scientific explanation" is one which explains a wide range of phenomena using few and simple terms which are qualitatively different from those phenomena which we are attempting to explain, and has some sort of real-world consequences which can be tested and measured, and in theory, there are some observations or measurements which would make us scrap the entire explanation and start again.

I think that that is a pretty good start. What say you?

If you are new here, here are the links to the first two classes:

• Link to Class 1

• Link to Class Introduction

Science vs. Religion

This lecture is just much longer than most, so I'll put a summary at the beginning:

• We can see that there is an antagonism between religion and science which exists in history, but not necessarily in the mind of every scientist/theologian. FB may have been an excellent example of a man who both advanced science as if it were his primary goal, but also held a belief in god, and didn't seem to suffer from existing in this state. He understood and quoted the Scriptures as if he had studied them as well as any theologian might, and yet he was unflinching in his contempt for those who might use their theological ambitions to restrain the knowledge of nature. I do not think that there can be no antagonism between religious thinking and scientific thinking that doesn't somewhat rely on the very natures of those varying approaches. It seems that FB thought the same, but that where those conflicts arose to defer to the scriptures in matters of 1) god's will, 2) morality, and 3) nothing else.

Item number two of what we hope to look at in this class is the relationship between science and the other intellectual attempts to make sense of the world. In the last lecture we got to look at some evidence of a potential antagonism between the advancement of science as is was being born a few hundred years ago and the political powers of that day.

Here we will see that as science begins to assert itself, from the very beginning, it has to do so while striking defensive postures against the religious establishment of the day. FB has to go out of his way to apologize and to find excuses for the science he promotes by arguments about and in the Scriptures.

'3 Therefore I did conclude with myself that I could not make unto your Majesty a better oblation than of some treatise tending to that end, whereof the sum will consist of these two parts: the former concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof; the latter, what the particular acts and works are which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning; and again, what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts: to the end that though I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your Majesty, or propound unto you framed particulars, yet I may excite your princely cogitations to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence to extract particulars for this purpose agreeable to your magnanimity and wisdom.

FB is going to look at:

• the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof

and at

• the particular acts and works ... which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning

and the problems he finds with such acts and works.

(again, he says to the king: "I'll tell you what I think, but there is no way I could instruct you, but you are so wise that after you read this freewill offering of mine (like the offering of a peasant to god) maybe you will find in your own (far more excellent) mind that you think the same things.) -- Sometimes people who are ahead of their times need to do the work for both parties in the conversation. They need to say what they think, and also find words for the other person so that they can have an acceptable way of reacting to what they've heard.

I. 1 In the entrance to the former of these—to clear the way and, as it were, to make silence, to have the true testimonies concerning the dignity of learning to be better heard, without the interruption of tacit objections—I think good to deliver it from the discredits and disgraces which it hath received, all from ignorance, but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines, sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politics, and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.

For as humble as FB is trying to be, he slips a little here when he puts "learned men" in contrast to the divines and those influenced by politics.

He says, there are a lot of ignorant attacks (discredits and disgraces) that the progress of learning has had to endure, and he wants to get rid of them upfront so that he can get back to talking about the "excellency of learning and knowledge" that is his true passion. We are going to see that, in order to be free to do science, Fb first has to be a master theologian. He has to argue from the scriptures that the Bible doesn't have a problem with what he wants to do; not because he necessarily cares about the Bible, but because it is the Bible from which the attacks on his endeavors originate.

2 I hear the former sort

(the divines--students of divinity/theology)

say that knowledge is of those things which are to be accepted of with great limitation and caution; that the aspiring to overmuch knowledge was the original temptation and sin whereupon ensued the fall of man; that knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and, therefore, where it entereth into a man it makes him swell; Scientia inflat;

("knowledge puffs up" an oft-quoted biblical phrase in modern evangelical churches, it is used (now and then) as a sort of trump-card (usually in conjunction, if it doesn't work by itself, with others like: "don't argue with the devil, he has more experience than you do") against any from any argument or way of thinking that causes a follower to question the established wisdom on some topic or point of theology. If you think you are right about something and I don't have an answer to it, I'll just change the subject to your attitude, and warn you that your arrogance will cause you one day to fall, because you are too "puffed up" by your knowledge. It is difficult to give this "line of thinking" a charitable reading. BUT, the original verse was actually very impressive. It is a verse which comes from Paul (who I mostly cannot stand), in 1 Corinthians 8:1 who says that sometimes, even though you have knowledge, you should take into consideration the fact that other people are ignorant and make accommodations for them in your speech and actions. While I might not actually agree with this sentiment, there is little in it that is quite so contemptuous as the unabashed emphasis that most religious people who quote that verse (both today, and in Francis Bacon's time) on its intellectual dishonesty.) But let's let FB continue listing the arguments brought against learning by the religious:

that Solomon gives a censure, “That there is no end of making books, and that much reading is weariness of the flesh;” and again in another place, “That in spacious knowledge there is much contristation, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth anxiety;” that Saint Paul gives a caveat, “That we be not spoiled through vain philosophy;”

Paul, no doubt, was an antagonist to the pursuit of knowledge. If not for any other reason than that he thought he already possessed it. What price the pursuit of knowledge if you can already have it?

that experience demonstrates how learned men have been arch-heretics, how learned times have been inclined to atheism, and how the contemplation of second causes doth derogate from our dependence upon God, who is the first cause.

Wow! FB isn't going to make it easy on himself. He makes a great set of arguments against his position by listing the best of the arguments of the religious:

• the original sin was the "aspiring to overmuch knowledge,"

• that there is "something of the serpent" in all this learning.

• this is why it makes men arrogant, and "puffs them up"

• Solomon (the wisest king), says that: "much reading is much weariness" and that there's just no end to it all, and that the more you know the worse you feel. (side note: Solomon was a great thinker, I'd really like to look at some of his works one day--just keep in mind that he was very learned when he wrote those things.)

• Paul tells us not to be spoiled by vain philosophy. (Paul was not so great a thinker, in my view.--he meant it.) :(

• a lot of learned men have been found to be "arch-heretics" (he must be speaking of Spinoza, for one, as well as many others)

• times of learning are usually atheistic

• thinking about physical causes distracts from thinking about the first-cause of everything, god.

So these are the arguments FB feels he needs to address before he can begin talking about how to advance learning through the scientific meathod.

continued here

In this course we will be reading through three books, bonus texts from other sources, and having a number of class discussion classes that don't directly read through any text. The following link provides an ordered list of every class in this course.

• Full List of all classes

I'm going to provide lists of all the classes that cover each of the main texts separately, as well as including them all in the comprehensive list (above):

• Just the Classes on Francis Bacon's "Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Humane"

• Just the Classes on Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum" (Coming soon)

• Just the Classes on "Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life" by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer

There will also be lists to interesting group participation discussions wherever they occur, and a list of links to the bonus texts that we will be examining:

• Interesting group participation discussions

• Just the Classes on Bonus Texts (Coming soon)

Some discussion about the classes.

This class will hopefully be interesting for a number of reasons.

'1. I hope to look at the texts in their historical contexts.

This aspect of the study is interesting for historical reasons. We will find that Francis Bacon (Henceforth, FB) adorns his book with certain artifacts peculiar to the circumstances in which he was writing. (Such as making the traditional apologies for errors ahead of time, and asking for charity ahead of time as well--a somewhat awkward and lengthy practice that evinces an comfortableness with early publishers at producing books (I think) in a time when the Bible had recently been the only really available text in print. This discomfort also seems to imply a kind of arrogance disguised as humility. What do I mean by that? well, now a days authors are comfortable with the idea that they are so limited in their understanding of things and that educated and literate readers also take for granted the difficulties of advancing human knowledge that they would look silly offering paragraphs and paragraphs in opening their work saying how there might still be some mistakes and begging forgiveness for these mistakes, and saying how hard they tried to purge their work of mistakes ahead of time. In our age we work hard not to have deliberate or silly mistakes but we take for granted that we are partaking in an ongoing conversation upon which we do not expect to have the last word. As science was just beginning (and as the rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz, etc.) were changing the game of philosophy as well (more on that, if anyone is interested)) there were still lessons to be learned about the difficulties of these endeavors and authors could, without looking silly expect that their works might be so accurate as to require little revision. They could not quite imagine just how large a new country they were beginning to explore. And so they could appear humble by apologizing in advance for tiny mistakes (and implicitly taking for granted how most of their work would be beyond question.)

We will discuss items like these, and others (an example, addressing your tome to the king), and what we might understand about the times through our study of the text--and the text through our understanding of the times in this aspect of the class. This is why I won't be skipping these parts of the book.

'2. How to Think Scientifically

If there is a primary objective in this class it will be to explore this aspect of FB's writings and learn as much as we can about it.

I should probably disclose a few things about myself and my world-view on this issue. I am not an empiricist. When I say "empiricist" I don't mean it in the philosophical sense of believing that all ideas must first come from sensory impressions, that might be true, and in any case my denial, affirmation, inclination, or skepticism on that point wouldn't really be relevant to this discussion. What I mean is that I don't believe that the only truths that men can (or should) come to or be occupied with are ideas that can be empirically verified.

Now, before we get in an uproar, and this gets cross-posted to r/atheism until I'm overwhelmed with a flood of demands that I back up what I just said with some "evidence" let me explain in two ways:

• First, I am disinclined to affirm anything that outrages reason, or goes against science. If there is scientific evidence for something, that thing is true, in a scientific sense.

• Second, when I hedge that last statement with "in a scientific sense" what I mean to suggest is not that one can believe scientific truths and then also believe contradictory non-sense. I'm not advocating cognitive dissonance here. What I am saying is that our brains are incapable of full knowledge on any subject, and *so long as a bit of information does not actively contradict a scientific truth, it is still available to us as a possible truth itself.

• Third, there are limits to what science can talk about. I know that that is essentially a cut-and-paste of the beginning of some creationist BS, but it is true none the less. While I value science and don't like things that specifically outrage it, I do think that there are a large number of very important concepts that science will never be able to directly verify. There are many which it hasn't so far been able to penetrate, but which I believe it will find no limits to exploring (the origin of consciousness, reason, rationality, consciences, etc.) but there are some things which by their very natures are not questions open to science (the origin of the big bang, the origin of the laws of mathematics, or cause-and-effect) NOW i know that there are many scientists with plenty of ideas on these subjects, but they aren't, when talking about them, actually doing science. This is an important distinction which we might as well get out of the way from the very beginning.

We are here to learn how to think scientifically. You can be a scientist and not be doing science. You can be a brilliant scientist and do brilliant science, and in some areas you may do brilliant philosophy, or brilliant mythology. Philosophy and mythology are both legitimate sources of knowledge in my view, and just because what you are talking about (even if you are a scientist) is brilliant, doesn't mean it is science.

Here are some examples:

• The whole universe is a holographic projection seen from the inside of a black hole (this is an idea currently under consideration by some scientists trying to understand the origin of the universe.) There is some great math which might show that this idea has beautiful symmetry, and it doesn't violate anything we know about the universe, and the mathematics and physics that we do know might even make the experience inside a black hole necessarily (and scientifically) look exactly the same BUT it isn't science.

• The ever increasing rate at which the universe is expanding will eventually rip it apart. there will be no possible connection between any two particles anymore. there will be a return to nothing, (so far this is all scientific enough) and then there will be a new big bang, this is what happened before we were here and how we got here (not science, anymore.)

• There will be a point at which the forces driving everything apart will no longer be the dominant forces and a new force of attraction (a force other than gravity) will pull everything back together into a big crunch, and then there will be a big bounce that will start us all up again. (so far, not scientific)

While all of those ideas are currently being advanced by scientists who are doing the very best science possible in understanding cosmology, none of them are themselves scientific ideas. we still haven't defined what makes science science, but this will give you an idea of what we will be discussing in this aspect of the class. (actually, some of those ideas might potentially be scientific if they can have implications that would be testable, some of them have no hope of ever being scientific) Just because they are not scientific doesn't mean that they are wrong. The accurate and correct view of the universe might not be a scientific idea! It is important to understand that science is a way of viewing the world and of trying to come to a particular kind of truth, a scientific truth. While the truths that are scientific can not be wrong scientifically, there is still room out there for other truth, and there are areas that science, because of the way it works, can never hope to travel.

This is why I like the humanities and other methods of understanding the world, they too are beautiful and they are also necessary. (I think that we will find that FB has this view as well, but I'm not certain.)

I know that not everyone agrees. Richard Dawkins doesn't seem to think that there is any truth other than a scientific truth. While that is fine for him, and I'm glad he is there doing his work (he is an amazing teacher, as well as an impressive, enlightening thinker and scientist). I personally am not like that, and this class will at times positively advocate science, and perhaps (and I hope) will help you to defend science against it's detractors, it will not advocate science as the only way to valuable truth.

But these are the discussions that I hope we will be having, and I hope that there will be many different views to debate and discuss this idea in this class!

'3. We are going to look at science as originating as one of the humanities.

More on this later.

'4. We are going to look at science as it interacts with others of the humanities. The relationships between science and philosophy, theology. As well as it's relationships to politics and religion.

'5. Other items

Interesting facts about FB or the people with whom he engaged in thought, plus any item of tangential relevance that any reader is interested in and brings up will be welcome here as well.

How the classes will work

Similar to r/Zarathustra (which I will be continuing even as we attack these works here)

I will be retyping the text into each lesson, and interrupting whenever a point of interest comes up.

Everyone else will be welcome to comment, argue, debate, post, anything they like. The more you engage the better. All viewpoints and arguments are welcome! (If there was a grading system, you would get an A+ for persuasively arguing a view that i don't hold, an A for arguing my side, and an F for just repeating things.) As well as all comments and added bits of info you have to offer.

As for format

I think that I will reprint the text always with at least one quotation line:

like this

and then print my comments right in the middle of the texts without those quotations. Let's see how that works.

Link to First Class

Science vs. Established Powers.

Of the Proficience and

ANDVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

Divine and Humane

TO THE KING

1. There were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and freewill offerings; the one proceeding upon ordinary observance, the other upon a devout cheerfulness: in like manner there belongeth to kings from their servants both tribute of duty and presents of affection. In the former of these I hope I shall not live to be wanting, according to my most humble duty, and the good pleasure of your Majesty's employments: for the latter, I thought it more respective to make choice of some oblation, which might rather refer to the propriety and excellency of your individual person, than to the business of your crown and state.

I believe that FB is speaking of the ancient Jewish law of Moses (found in Leviticus, the third book of the Torah), he is referencing the fact that Jewish law had it that men should offer sacrifices to God of two kinds: freewill offerings, and necessary ones. It was a duty to sacrifice certain animals (I believe FB is wrong when he calls them "daily sacrifices", they weren't required every day to sacrifice an animal, though there were laws which applied every day), but whenever someone wanted to make a specific "praise-offering" or supplication they had rules governing how to do those things, but not necessarily saying that one had to in the first place.

FB is simply kissing ass to the king. (It's an art-form how well he kisses-ass--I wonder if there is a BDSM subreddit somewhere which might be interested in this class? (jk)--Notice how even after he separates the duties from the freewill offerings he underlines that he hasn't taken for granted that just because he is about to offer a free-will offering that that means he assumes that he has met all of his duties to the king: "In the former of these I hope I shall not live to be wanting.")

...

It is interesting that this ass-kissing is not so arbitrary as it may seem, and also might help us to appreciate the seriousness, not of monarchy, but of what FB is doing by advancing human knowledge through science. Could it be that there might be a potential threat to the established powers in what FB is doing, if he doesn't preface it with this kind of supplication? I think so. I think that the established powers, and FB both knew that there is some truth to the old clique about the relationship between knowledge and power. The monarchy eventually lost it's power to a new merchant class which gained monetary influence by benefiting from the scientific advancements of the day. But that wouldn't be the way in which FB or the others of his time understood it. (notice that FB calls this "freewill offering" of his a tribute to the kings personality in contradistinction to "the business of" his "crown and state". FB, at least, didn't view the progress of scientific knowledge as a means of manipulating power and controlling the world, but as a personal thing.

Science was born into the family of the Humanities.

So that would mean that the potential threat to the established powers was a personal one. Could a publisher of a wildly successful text achieve a celebrity status which might require said publisher to underline the fact that he is under the king and lives to serve him? (side note: these printed texts approached a divine significance (not only was the bible the only available printed book for much time in this place in history, but the words "Glamorous" and "Grammar" both come from the same root. There was something magical about the ability to read and write--think of other words referring to language for more examples, "incantation" comes to mind. also remember that divinity is the place from which kings argued their authority originated.)

'2. Wherefore, representing your Majesty many times unto my mind, and beholding you not with the inquisitive eye of presumption, to discover that which the Scripture telleth me is inscrutable, but with the observant eye of duty and admiration; leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched, yea, and possessed with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgement, and the facility and order of your elocution: and I have often thought, that of all the persons living that I have known, your Majesty were the best instance to make a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge is but remembrance, and that the mind of man by nature knoweth all things, and hath but her own native and original notions (which by the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle the body are sequestered) again revived and restored: such a light of nature I have observed in your Majesty, and such a readiness to take flame and blaze from the least occasion presented, or the least spark of another's knowledge delivered

I'm just going to pause in the middle of this paragraph to say three things:

• I'm not going to talk anymore about the supplication aspect. I think we've brought up enough interesting points to consider and if anyone wants to talk more about these or other details of this aspect of the book, please bring it up in comments.

• If anyone has any particular historical knowledge of the king to whom he is writing (King James I?) and how the merit of that king might be said to deserve, or not to deserve such praises, I would be interested to learn of that.

• What is the idea of Plato's that he is talking about? Plato once argued that all men have all knowledge already in their minds. Education was a process of helping men to remember what they already "know". Plato illustrated this point by having his character (Socrates, who never wrote anything himself) make the point and then pull over a slave and ask him a few questions about lines and angles until he demonstrated (only by asking questions) that the slave actually could be brought to show an advanced theorem of geometry (that the slave himself thought he didn't know) through what he already knew he knew. FB says that the king is so Majestic that he is the best argument that all men have all knowledge because he evinces a knowledge of so much.

let's continue...

And as the Scripture saith of the wisest king,

This would be King Solomon, of whose writings you might check out "Ecclesiastes" first and foremost. Solomon was the son of King David, he ruled over Israel in Jerusalem as the third king Israel ever had (according to the history of the Scriptures). King David advanced militarily the nation of Israel as large as it would ever be, his son spent his time engaged in building gardens, seeking knowledge around the world, and writing philosophical texts. (David wasn't allowed to build the temple (according to the Bible) because he was such a warrior that god told him he was too bloody to build the place where they would cut apart animals in sacrifice to him, so Solomon built that as well as many other buildings--he was kind of a Renaissance man of the BCE.) he wrote a few psalms, he wrote most of Proverbs, all of Ecclesiastes, and a sex book called "Song of Solomon". I'd like to do one of these classes on some of his writings at some point as well.

"That his heart was as the sands of the sea";

1 Kings 4:29

which though it be one of the largest bodies, yet it consisteth of the smallest and finest portions; so hath God given your Majesty a composition of understanding admirable, being able to compass and comprehend the greatest matters, and nevertheless to touch and apprehend the least; whereas it should seem an impossibility in nature, for the same instrument to make itself fit for great and small works.

All of this king-ass-kissing reminds me of this (Monty Python Sketch with king-ass-kissing as one of it's themes)

And for your gift of speech, I call to mind what Cornelius Tacit saith of Augustus Caesar: "Augusto profluens, et quae principem deceret, eloquentia fuit."

Does anyone here know latin? The best I can do is: "Augustus's speech flows, and that is what distinguishes him as a prince." I'm sure I'm totally off.

For if we note it well, speech that is uttered with labour and difficulty, or speech that savoureth of the affectation of art and precepts, or speech that that is framed after the imitation of some pattern of eloquence, though never so excellent; all this hath somewhat servile, and holding of the subject. But your Majesty's manner of speech is indeed prince-like, flowing as from a fountain, and yet streaming and branching itself into nature's order, full of facility and felicity, imitating none, and inimitable by any.

I'd really like to know what anyone knows about this king.

And as in your civil estate there appeareth to be an emulation and contention of your Majesty's virtue with your fortune; a virtuous disposition with a fortunate regiment; a virtuous expectation (when time was) of your greater fortune, with a prosperous possession thereof in the due time; a virtuous observation of the laws of marriage, with most blessed and happy fruit of marriage; a virtuous and most Christian desire of peace, with a fortunate inclination in your neighbour princes thereunto: so likewise in these intellectual matters, there seemeth to be no less contention between the excellency of your Majesty's gifts of nature and the universality and perfection of your learning.

This might not me the most well thought out comment, but I wonder what anyone thinks of this idea: I know that there were reasons why the king would need an heir, and why FB would list it among his achievements, but I sometimes wonder if the embodiment of the state was in some way thought of by his subjects as the only character whose happiness mattered. I mean, it almost looks like if just the kings life was in order that is all that the political system needed to justify its existence. Is this a quality of monarchy? Are progressive instincts the natural emergence of democratic societies because democratic systems are an analogue to this? I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on this.

For I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been since Christ’s time any king or temporal monarch which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession of the Emperors of Rome, of which Cæsar the Dictator (who lived some years before Christ) and Marcus Antoninus were the best learned, and so descend to the Emperors of Græcia, or of the West, and then to the lines of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king if, by the compendious extractions of other men’s wits and labours, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments and shows of learning, or if he countenance and prefer learning and learned men; but to drink, indeed, of the true fountains of learning—nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king, and in a king born—is almost a miracle. And the more, because there is met in your Majesty a rare conjunction, as well of divine and sacred literature as of profane and human; ...

I hope I don't insult anyone by pointing out that the word "profane" here simply refers to subject matters non-theological. In this sense, knowledge of the trinity would be holy, sacred, or divine knowledge, while understanding animal husbandry, or how to build a river-mill would be an examples of knowledge profane--not sacreligious, just not specifically about theology.

...so as your Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes: the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher. This propriety inherent and individual attribute in your Majesty deserveth to be expressed not only in the fame and admiration of the present time, nor in the history or tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument, bearing a character or signature both of the power of a king and the difference and perfection of such a king.

That is a lot of praise. I wonder also if maybe the interest in science held by some at the time wanted something that required this long throat-clearing. Perhaps, when introducing ideas with the principle interest in advancing knowledge through empirical verification into a court whose primary goals were the establishment and continuance of the monarchical authority required a preface which allowed the book to seem (in part) as a great tribute to that monarchy's power. Perhaps, by accomplishing such a tribute, FB helped to ensure that his book could be read in a world whose values were different from those he wished to advance.

It is also true that FB knew well from his personal experience that favor with the king meant the difference between poverty in prison and wealth and honorable commission.

• I'm going to just move on here to the next class so that we can get to the discussion of science soon. But, if you found any of this interesting or if you would like to disagree or add to any part of it, please feel free to add to the comments.