Bacon & Dregs

[Joseph Tracy]

I'm reading Rupert Sheldrake's Science Set Free. He touches on Bacon's vision within the history of science and philosophy. It  is fascinating reading.  He questions some of the common precepts of current science using experimental evidence from respected scientists. It is interesting to see how much disagreement there is on some very fundamental questions and how little certain basic phenomena are really understood.  He is a very lucid thinker and writer.   
On Aug 23, 2013, at 4:49 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> 
> Apt too, act two, Act 2, too, II, 1+1
> 
> 
> http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/57392/
> 
> On Friday, August 23, 2013, alice wellintown wrote:
> In a trash can I found a book of Bacon. This essay is the sweetest. 
> "Of Innovations"
> 
> It's also apt. 
> 
> http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-25.html
> 
> 
> On Friday, August 23, 2013, Markekohut wrote:
> VERY LIKE! witty.
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Aug 23, 2013, at 7:49 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 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 u