Bacon & Dregs

[alice wellintown]

So, Knowledge is Power. And knowledge, as Bacon defined it, against
the Dregs and Aristotle, is the foundation of Empire. And, Bacon's
Empire, built on the foundation of knowledge and power, on NAtural
Science, has been built. The Industrial Revolution, steam,
electricity, these are the manifestations of Bacon's dream of Empire.
The father of induction confronted the Dregs. And in like manner, the
clash, the culture, custom, clash, against traditions, beliefs, all
that was muddy and prone to a foggy way of seeing things, to a
slugishness of mind, was driven by a curiosity about new and different
ideas. The fear of others, of far of places, of all that ancient Dregs
had invented about the unknown and yet discovered places, must be met
with direct experience, with contact and more contact, with more and
more repudiation of the ancient Dregs at home, and where adventure and
exploration was.

Bacon tastes great.

On 8/23/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bacon's struggle to overcome intellectual blockades and the dogmatic
> slumber of his age and of earlier periods had to be fought on many
> fronts. Very early on he criticized not only Plato, Aristotle and the
> Aristotelians, but also humanists and Renaissance scholars such as
> Paracelsus and Bernardino Telesio.
>
> Although Aristotle provided specific axioms for every scientific
> discipline, what Bacon found lacking in the Greek philosopher's work
> was a master principle or general theory of science, which could be
> applied to all branches of natural history and philosophy (Klein
> 2003a). For Bacon, Aristotle's cosmology, as well as his theory of
> science, had become obsolete and consequently so too had many of the
> medieval thinkers who followed his lead. He does not repudiate
> Aristotle completely, but he opposes the humanistic interpretation of
> him, with its emphasis on syllogism and dialectics (scientia operativa
> versus textual hermeneutics) and the metaphysical treatment of natural
> philosophy in favor of natural forms (or nature's effects as
> structured modes of action, not artifacts), the stages of which
> correspond—in the shape of a pyramid of knowledge—to the structural
> order of nature itself.
>
>
>  Bacon began to struggle with tradition as early as 1603. In Valerius
> Terminus (1603?) he already repudiates any mixture of natural
> philosophy and divinity; he provides an outline of his new method and
> determines that the end of knowledge was “a discovery of all
> operations and possibilities of operations from immortality (if it
> were possible) to the meanest mechanical practice” (Bacon III [1887],
> 222). He opposes Aristotelian anticipatio naturae, which favored the
> inquiry of causes to satisfy the mind instead of those “as will direct
> him and give him light to new experiences and inventions” (Bacon III
> [1887], 232).
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/#NatStrTra
>
> It may surprize some to learn that Bacon's great obstacle was
> Aristitole ands how Arisitole was adopted, but we when we remember
> that Aristotle stressed that only that which was already known could
> be learned, that is, that the growth of learning, of knowledge
> involved simply bringing together, a synthesis, of the universal truth
> of reason and the particular of sense. Growth of knowledge belonged to
> "becoming", that is, to change, and is thus inferior to what is known,
> to knowledge that, through reflexivity, that is the manipulation of
> this in syllogistics or demonstration.
>
> So, as Aristotle struggled against the Dregs, now Bacon must struggle,
> and the Ancient Dregs include Aristotle and his fellow travelers.
>
> Demonstration of the old truths is the stuff of school boys in a lab.
> Bacon would fly out inot the unknown and probe the mysteries of
> Nature, unlock her secrets.
>
> But is Bacon good? Sure tastes great. Not good for your hyertension.
> Low dosium, Turkey Bacon, anyone?
>
>
>
>
>
> On 8/22/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Slavery is a poor example. Too easily mangled by a sophist's rhetoric,
>> too
>> terribly tangled in the web of history. A sophomore can make a eat pie
>> out
>> of Greeks without reading them by turning on the slavery switch.
>>
>>
>> Still, there seems to be a side to this idea, to this argument, even if
>> no
>> one has got its back. I hesitate to identify it. It is common enough. The
>> stuff that someone as un-lettered as me might absorb sitting in on an
>> introduction to philosophy course, or pick up in one of those popular
>> online courses, like the philosophy of science, or the history of ideas
>> in
>> the west, or, probably where I got it from, by reading what looks cool in
>> the discarded books and magazines bin at the public library.
>>
>> Of course, so western, so limited by its just coming from the west, that
>> is, and it is doubtful....if anything ever really does come just from the
>> west, but still...if we are gonna get Spengler out,  we might bite
>> into crispy, salty, yummy...Bacon.
>>
>>  Like Newton, Tesla, Adam Smith, Malthus,  the list seems
>> endless....Marx....Bacon struggled and suffered from the mixture of the
>> ancient foolishness, religion and irrational ideas, and the modern ideas,
>> some of them foolish and irrational too. So that to read him we must wade
>> through mud and murky waters before we get to the fountain that sprang
>> for
>> us. It shot up, we read, from his use of induction, but it was his
>> adventurous spirit, and this is, so the story goes, Captured in his
>> famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", and this, this idea, and the
>> spirit
>> that set out gain to knowledge, not from the ancient sages or holy books,
>> but from his pragmatic rejection of the past in favor of the mystery, of
>> the unknown, of the yet to be discovered world, and so, and now we may
>> need
>> a more focused course, on American Pragmatism, say, Bacon tastes best
>> with
>> American philosophy...and, as history would have it, the Americans, those
>> pragmatists, are linked, by a strange blood sausage, to Bacon, by
>> Emerson.
>>
>> Emerson looked East, yes, but in a narcissistic self reliant rugged
>> individualistic turn, he made Bacon a dish for the pragmatists.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, August 22, 2013, Bekah wrote:
>>
>>> My point is that these days we are horrified.  Two hundred years ago our
>>> US ancestors kept slaves legally - and in the minds of some it was the
>>> morally right thing to do.  Whether or not the US should legalize
>>> slavery
>>> has never been seriously debated since the 13th Amendment in 1864.
>>>
>>> Also,  your point may be one of the types of things Pinker is criticized
>>> for - he tends to use percentages rather than actual numbers.
>>>
>>> Bekah
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Aug 22, 2013, at 11:35 AM, Lemuel Underwing <luunderwing at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > If I recall correctly there are more slaves today than there were two
>>> hundred years ago, and I'm not talkin' bout Industrial Slaves either
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>>> > wrote:
>>> > But today we are horrified by slavery anywhere.  Today we abhor many
>>> things that centuries ago,  or decades for that matter,  were taken as a
>>> matter of course -  lynchings for example,  but also direct warfare
>>> between
>>> major powers,  capital punishment (in most of the western world,
>>> anyway),
>>>  the abuse of women, children, ethnic minorities, gays,  - even of
>>> animals.
>>> >
>>> > Steven Pinker's book,  The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence
>>> > Has
>>> Declined [2011],  is flawed in many respects,  but he makes some
>>> interesting points.
>>> >
>>> > That said,   I'm not taking a side here because I think capitalism and
>>> elements of fascism play into the equation.  Otoh,  the devastation of
>>> Hiroshima and the atrocities of the Holocaust had an impact.
>>> >
>>> > Bekah
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Aug 22, 2013, at 8:59 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > Yes . Very reasonable points about our collective abilities. But my
>>> argument is that we often ascribe to ourselves as individuals what we
>>> only
>>> have as part of a system. The gap between the wisdom of moderns and the
>>> wisdom of the ancients still seems more self congratulatory than
>>> substantive.  The young girls that make shirts in nasty and dangerous
>>> factories in Pakistan seem little different than slaves. As far as the
>>> status of women, this freedom has not been extended to other cultures
>>> colonized by the Euro and patriarchal powers in the same way as to the
>>> wives and daughters and mothers of the democracies. The link between
>>> "our"
>>> purportedly enlightened and technically advanced system and crude forms
>>> of
>>> exploitation that rival any in history is shown in the factory
>>> conditions
>>> of people making parts for Apple products.
>>> > >
>>> > > I am not saying people used to be wiser. I am arguing for realistic
>>> humility in claims to advancement, because so much of the history of
>>> that
>>> advancement has been directly at the expense of  militarily and
>>> culturally
>>> vulnerable cultures. In these kinds of advancements there is as much
>>> injury
>>> and loss as advance.
>>> > >
>>> > > We inherit through the written word and technology a tremendous
>>> inheritance of potential wisdom and possibility, but we also inherit
>>> some
>>> really destructive habits and colonialist historic patterns that are
>>> built
>>> around treating the biosphere and its inhabitants as a can of materials
>>> to
>>> be mined, used and discarded.  What I see is more of a runaway train
>>> than
>>> a
>>> wise, sustainable  and advanced modern culture. We are generating
>>> powerful
>>> warnings and solutions but so far they are not really slowing the
>>> destructive juggernaut. I hope I am wrong and that what we are going
>>> through now will as you also hope enable and compel the changes that are
>>> needed.  I am just really saying that some humility is in order and is
>>> part
>>> of the needed change.
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > On Aug 21, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >> I am loathe to take issue with you Joseph, I agree in so many ways,
>>> but there are a couple of points I want to add to color your choler
>>> with.
>>> First, the "we" thing. As regards your examples of things we can and
>>> cannot
>>> do, "we" can build computers and cell phones and such. I can't make the
>>> entire product, you can't, and neither can he or she, but they can, and
>>> we
>>> can do things they cannot. I've worked making the batteries for tech
>>> devices in the past, for example, which is something Bill Gates couldn't
>>> do. Among the things we can't do are making an axe from chert and wood;
>>> using the entire carcass of an animal we have killed with a bow and
>>> arrow,
>>> or atlatl, or snare we likewise could not have made; we couldn't build a
>>> castle of stone that can stand for a year, much less for 500 or a 1000
>>> years. We no longer have the skills to live in the ways that the people
>>> among whom the wisdom traditions evolved did; still, as you say, we
>>> could
>>> certainly learn skills from them. Could we learn to keep slaves as they
>>> did? To demean and disempower women as they did? To leave the weak to
>>> suffer and die as they did? Well, obviously "we" can, but could you?
>>> Could
>>> I?
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Permaculture, peak oil communities, intentional communities, etc.,
>>> are all good starts t
>>
>