Giles of Rome, in his early treatise, De plurificatione possibilis intellectus, criticizes the arguments of Thomas Aquinas against the Averroist doctrine of the uniqueness of the possible intellect on the grounds that Aquinas does not fully appreciate the distinction between material and intentional forms and the differences in how these forms are generated. Nevertheless, like Aquinas, he argues that Averroes' doctrine still results in the apparently absurd consequence that homo non intelligit, i.e., the individual, particular man, this man, does not (...) understand. Giles, however, attempts to respond to certain "radical" Averroists, who, in a bold and clever maneuver, affirm that homo non intelligit. While Giles does effectively argue that homo non intelligit is not the opinion of Averroes, he is unable to demonstrate the absurdity of homo non intelligit in a manner that would be convincing to the Averroists. This is because Giles, like Aquinas, maintains that the intellect is a power of the soul, and thus has a different conception of the relation between body and intellect than do the Averroists, who emphasize the separateness of the intellect. (shrink)
H. Wittman, A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe (eds.): Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community Content Type Journal Article Category Review Paper Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s10806-012-9375-1 Authors Charles Francis, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, UNL, 279 Plant Science, Lincoln, NE 68583-0915, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.
Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was (...) concerned equally with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)
Spike Lee’s film 25 th Hour begins with an act of violence that it does not show: instead, the viewer hears the sounds of a dog being beaten. The dog’s menacing growl is then transformed into the growling image of Montgomery ‘Monty’ Brogan’s car speeding through New York. Monty spots the dog, and stops. It is only then that the viewer witnesses the results of the film’s ‘foundational’ act of violence: the bloody body of a dog beaten to pulp. When (...) Monty approaches the dog, it turns out the animal ‘still has some bite left in him’. Perhaps because the dog is a fighter, Monty decides to save him. Although the dog resists, he ultimately manages to get the dog in the trunk of his car. But Monty does not emerge from the rescue operation unscathed: blood is trickling from a cut in his neck. This scene can be read as a pre-figuration of a stomach-turning scene towards the end of the film, in which Monty’s friend Francis ‘Frank’ Slaughtery will beat up Monty’s face beyond recognition so that Monty will not be raped on his first night in jail. Monty’s face recalls the dog at the beginning of the film. It is through the bloody mess of their bodies that Monty and the dog begin to communicate, to enter into communion. This essay explores how this communion, this communication between Monty and the dog, comes about. I am interested, specifically, in what the significance of such an exploration might be for contemporary conceptions of community. The essay initially approaches this topic against the background of Emmanuel Levinas’ work on ethics, in which the notion of the face has played a crucial role. But its aim is really to situate the film, through the references to the work of Francis Bacon that it includes, in a more contemporary, post-Levinasian debate on an ethics of defacement. I am particularly interested in exploring the significance of such an ethics in the post-September 11 era, which is explicitly evoked at the beginning of Lee’s film. My argument is that Monty and the dog begin to communicate, to enter into a communion, and thus to form a community, through a process of defacement that simultaneously strips them from their ways of life and propels them into a shared ethical and political becoming. (shrink)
THE LIFE Of FRANCIS BACON, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND. THE ancient Egyptians had a law, which ordained that the actions and characters of their dead ...
This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - to give the essence of his work and thinking. -/- Although he had a distinguished career as a lawyer and statesman, Francis Bacon's lifelong goal was to improve and extend human knowledge. In The Advancement of Learning (...) (1605) he made a brilliant critique of the deficiencies of previous systems of thought and proposed improvements to knowledge in every area of human life. He conceived the Essays (1597, much enlarged in 1625) as a study of the formative influences on human behaviour, psychological and social. In The New Atlantis (1626) he outlined his plan for a scientific research institute in the form of a Utopian fable. In addition to these major English works this edition includes 'Of Tribute', an important early work here printed complete for the first time, and a revealing selection of his legal and political writings, together with his poetry. -/- A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and glosses his vocabulary. (shrink)
This volume belongs to the first new critical edition of the works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to have been produced since the nineteenth century. The edition presents the works in broadly chronological order and according to the best principles of modern textual scholarship. The seven works in the present volume belong to the final completed stages (Parts III-V) of Bacon's hugely ambitious six-part sequence of philosophical works, collectively entitled Instauratio magna (1620-6). All are presented in the original Latin with (...) new facing-page translations. Three of the seven texts (substantial works in two cases, and all sharing a startlingly improbable textual history) are published and translated here for the first time: these are an early version of the Historia densi, the 'lost' Abecedarium, and the Historia de animato & inanimato. Another - the Prodromi sive anticipationes philosophiae secundae - has likewise never been translated before. Together with their commentaries and the introduction they open the way to important new understandings of Bacon's mature philosophical thought. (shrink)
This is the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of Bacon's principal philosophical work in English, The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and humane - traditionally known as The Advancement of Learning.
This volume inaugurates a new critical edition of the writings of the great English philosopher and sage Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - the first such complete edition for more than a hundred years. It contains six of Bacon's Latin scientific works, each accompanied by entirely new facing-page translations which, together with the extensive introduction and commentaries, offer fresh insights into one of the great minds of the early seventeenth century.
Political Freedom By George G. Brenkert Routledge, 1991. Pp. 278. ISBN 0?415?03372?1. £35 hbk. Wittgenstein: A Bibliographical Guide By Guido Frongia and Brian McGuinness Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. x + 438. ISBN 00631?13765?3. £60.00. Metaphysics By Peter van Inwagen Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 222. ISBN 0?19?8751400. £11.95 pbk. The Nature of Moral Thinking By Francis Snare Routledge, 1992. Pp. 187. ISBN 0?415?04709?9. £9.99 pbk. Filosofía analitica hoy: Encuentro de tradiciones Edited by Mercedes Torrevejano Servicio de (...) Publications Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1991. Pp. 284. ISBN 84?7191?722?X. $15.5 pbk. The Puzzle of Experience By J.J. Valberg Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. 227. ISBN 0?19?824291?3. £25. Religion and Philosophy Edited by Martin Warner Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 31 Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. vi + 155. ISBN 0?521?42951?X. £10.95 pbk. The Uses of Philosophy By Mary Warnock Blackwell, 1992. Pp. 256. ISBN 0?631?18038?9. £35.00 hbk. £11.95 pbk. The Disappearance of Time: Kurt Godel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy By Palle Yourgrau Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 182. ISBN 0?521?41012?6. £27.50. (shrink)
The major aim of this article consists in ascertaining the reasons which drove Bacon to compose what he called Instauratio Magna: a great institution of the future science in terms of an broad restoration of the past of science. It brings an exposition of his project (of what he meant to do) in contradistinction to what he effectively accomplished. Cconsidering that Kant dedicated to Bacon his Critique of Pure Reason, it is also an imperative concern of this article to search (...) for the reasons of this dedication. (shrink)
In Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Francis Beckwith argues that fetuses are such that, from conception, they are prima facie wrong to kill. He thinks abortion is almost never permissible beyond rare cases where, unless the fetus is killed, both the pregnant woman and the fetus will die. He defends his view not from religiously-justified premises but by appealing to “a particular metaphysics of the human person” that he calls “The (...) Substance View.” I will argue that such metaphysics is irrelevant to the morality of abortion. Beckwith’s metaphysics thereby neither supports, nor detracts from, his abortion ethic. Moral, not metaphysical, assumptions drive the argument, and Beckwith inadequately defends these assumptions. Indeed, they are often false, and his main argument is unsound. (130 words). (shrink)
In a series of powerful and challenging articles emerging since the mid-1990s, Brian Leiter has argued that certain theoretical strains in contemporary legal philosophy are ‘epistemologically bankrupt’, in virtue of their reliance on misguided argumentative devices: analysing concepts, such as the concepts of law and of authority; and doing so by appealing to intuitions regarding the correct way to understand the concepts in question. In response to this state of affairs, Leiter advocates that jurisprudence ought to attempt to catch-up (...) with ‘naturalistic’ developments which have influenced the direction of other branches of philosophy – such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy – in the last few decades. This article offers a critical analysis of some of Leiter’s proposals for what Jurisprudence should become, in light of his views on the relevance of naturalism for this discipline. (shrink)
An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), jointly with Francis Hutcheson’s earlier work Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), presents one of the most original and wide-ranging moral philosophies of the eighteenth century. These two works, each comprising two semi-autonomous treatises, were widely translated and vastly influential throughout the eighteenth century in England, continental Europe, and America. -/- The two works had (...) their greatest impact in Scotland and influenced many well-known Scottish philosophers, particularly those writing after the last Jacobite upheaval, in 1745. This can be seen in the concern of the post-1745 generation with analyzing human nature as the foundation of moral theory, with the “moral sense” and moral epistemology more generally, with the impartial spectator and the calm passions, and with the independence of benevolence from self-interest. In addition to the influence of his writings, Hutcheson was also a famed teacher whose Glasgow students, notably Adam Smith, held sway over generations of Scottish moral philosophers. -/- Despite their impact on Scottish letters, the four treatises were in fact written in Dublin, and the philosophers to whom Hutcheson responded and with whom he debated were in the main not Scottish but English, Irish, French, Roman, and Greek. Consequently, part of Hutcheson’s legacy was a cosmopolitan outlook among enlightened Scots, who learned to turn their eyes far from home. (shrink)
In Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (2007) and an earlier article in this journal, "Defending Abortion Philosophically"(2006), Francis Beckwith argues that fetuses are, from conception, prima facie wrong to kill. His arguments are based on what he calls a "metaphysics of the human person" known as "The Substance View." I argue that Beckwith’s metaphysics does not support his abortion ethic: Moral, not metaphysical, claims that are part of this Substance View are the foundation of (...) the argument, and Beckwith inadequately defends these moral claims. Thus, Beckwith’s arguments do not provide strong support for what he calls the "pro-life" view of abortion. (shrink)
Francis Bacon (15611626) wrote that good scientists are not like ants (mindlessly gathering data) or spiders (spinning empty theories). Instead, they are like bees, transforming nature into a nourishing product. This essay examines Bacon's "middle way" by elucidating the means he proposes to turn experience and insight into understanding. The human intellect relies on "machines" to extend perceptual limits, check impulsive imaginations, and reveal nature's latent causal structure, or "forms." This constructivist interpretation is not intended to supplant inductivist or (...) experimentalist interpretations, but is designed to explicate Bacon's account of science as a collaborative project with several interdependent methodological goals. (shrink)
Like all theories that account for moral motivation, Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory faces two related challenges. The skeptical challenge calls into question what reasons an agent has to be moral at all. The priority challenge asks why an agent's reasons to be moral tend to outweigh her non-moral reasons to act. I argue a defender of Hutcheson can respond to these challenges by building on unique features of his account. She can respond to skeptical challenge by drawing a (...) direct parallel between an agent's reasons to pursue natural, self-directed goods and her reasons to pursue moral goods. This parallel, however, makes establishing the significance of morality difficult. Given this difficulty, a separate aspect of Hutcheson's account, the additional weight given to benevolence in our assessment of mixed actions, can be used to respond to the priority challenge. (shrink)
This is the first modern book to describe Francis Bacon's jurisprudence. He has long been famous as a scientist, philosopher, politician and literary giant, but his career as one of England's greatest lawyers and jurists has been largely overlooked. Bacon's major contribution to Anglo-American jurisprudence is presented in such a way as to be suitable to specialists and non-specialists alike. The purpose is to restore Bacon to his rightful place as England's first true critical and analytical jurist, and to (...) describe how his legal thought related to his other great intellectual achievements. (shrink)
This paper argues that the founding fathers of the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment natural jurisprudence, Gersholm Carmichael (1672–1729) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), articulated a view of rights that is pertinent to the contemporary dominance of the language of rights. Maintaining a metaphysical foundation for rights while drawing upon the early-modern Protestant natural law tradition, their conception of rights is more significantly indebted to the pre-modern scholastic natural law tradition than often realized. This is illustrated by exploring some of the (...) background to their respective theories of rights, detailing the precise reasoning that Carmichael and Hutcheson brought to bear upon their conception of rights, and then exploring their application of their understanding of rights to the question of property. (shrink)
Breaking with a Puritan past -- A mother's concern -- Turmoil and diversity in the English Reformation -- The influences and the options available in English -- Reformation theology -- Intellectual trends : patristics and hebrew -- Millennialism and the belief in a providential age -- Bacon's break with the godly -- Bacon's turn toward the ancient faith -- The formative years -- Bacon and Andrewes -- The Meditationes sacrae and Bacon's turn away from calvinism -- Bacon's confession of faith (...) -- In the beginning : the creation of nature and the nature of the fall the instauration as an event in sacred history -- The ages of the world and the chain of causes -- Creation as a pattern for human learning -- Humanity in the garden -- Knowledge and the fall -- Knowledge as a support for the faith -- Human effort as the key to recovery -- On the way of salvation : Bacon's twofold via salutis -- Bbacon and original sin -- Patterns in divine action and prophecies of instauration -- The instauration in the history of providence -- Bacon's providential age -- The conditions for instauration -- In the autumn of the world : features of the age of instauration -- Irenaeus and Francis Bacon on the golden age -- Inaugurated eschatology in Bacon's instauration -- Laborers in the fields of instauration : orders and offices -- Rebuilding the temple of nature -- Human agency and the instauration -- The problem of confusing the two books -- The possibility of immortality -- Bacon's circle and his legacy -- Bacon's literary circle -- Tobie Matthew (1577-1655) -- William Rawley (1588-1667) -- Henry Wotton (15681639) -- Thomas Bushell (1594-1674) -- John Selden (1584-1654) -- George Herbert (1593-1633) -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Thomas Bodley (1545-1613) -- Conclusions regarding Bacon's literary circle -- The reform of learning in the Civil War and the commonwealth the restoration and the Royal Society -- The Enlightenment transformation of Bacon's memory. (shrink)
Francis of Marchia dealt at length in several different contexts with the nature of the will and willing. Here I examine just one of those discussions: the possibility for the will to go against reason's final judgment, a topic related to weakness of will and the source of sin. Marchia is clearly of a voluntaristic bent, holding that the will can indeed act against the determination of reason. After examining Marchia's argumentation for his position, I explore some of the (...) background to Marchia's view in a distinctively later medieval understanding of the human mind as a system of internal acts and dispositions, with the possibility that several of them belong to the same faculty simultaneously. This increasingly complex conceptualisation of the mind mirrors a new, more complex conceptualization of the "Self". (shrink)
At first sight it would seem difficult to find two philosophers as different as Brian Barry and Richard Rorty. It is widely held that the former is one of the most forceful proponents of liberal universalism, whereas the latter is typically viewed as the quintessential relativist. In this essay, different usages of the term univeralism are considered, and it is argued that Rorty's position is much closer to that of Barry than is generally supposed. Indeed, the article concludes by (...) suggesting that it is Rorty who offers the less question-begging philosophical account of political liberalism. (shrink)
... AND PROFITABLE INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES; THE BEST STATE OF THAT PROVINCE”: TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE DURING FRANCIS BACON'S STAY IN FRANCE* Luisa ...
Human beings are peculiar. In laboratory experiments, they often cooperate in one-shot prisoners’ dilemmas, they frequently offer 1/2 and reject low offers in the ultimatum game, and they often bid 1/2 in the game of divide-the-cake All these behaviors are puzzling from the point of view of game theory. The first two are irrational, if utility is measured in a certain way.1 The last isn’t positively irrational, but it is no more rational than other possible actions, since there are infinitely (...) many other Nash equilibria besides the one in which both players bid 1/2. At the same time, these behaviors seem to indicate that people are sometimes inclined to be cooperative, fair, and just. In his stimulating new book, Brian Skyrms sets himself the task of showing why these inclinations evolved, or how they might have evolved, under the pressure of natural selection. The goal is not to justify our ethical intuitions, but to explain why we have them.2.. (shrink)
Brian Rotman argues that (one) “mind” and (one) “god” are only conceivable, literally, because of (alphabetic) literacy, which allowed us to designate each of these ghosts as an incorporeal, speaker-independent “I” (or, in the case of infinity, a notional agent that goes on counting forever). I argue that to have a mind is to have the capacity to feel. No one can be sure which organisms feel, hence have minds, but it seems likely that one-celled organisms and plants do (...) not, whereas animals do. So minds originated before humans and before language --hence, a fortiori, before writing, whether alphabetic or ideographic. (shrink)
Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu (eds), Nietzsche and Morality Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10677-008-9134-6 Authors Rainer Kattel, Tallinn University of Technology Ehitajate tee 5 19086 Tallinn Estonia Journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Online ISSN 1572-8447 Print ISSN 1386-2820.
This edition contains all Bacon's philosophical works as well as translations, plus literary and professional works and includes illuminating introductions and ...
Human beings are peculiar. In laboratory experiments, they often cooperate in one-shot prisoners’ dilemmas, they frequently offer 1/2 and reject low offers in the ultimatum game, and they often bid 1/2 in the game of divide-the-cake All these behaviors are puzzling from the point of view of game theory. The first two are irrational, if utility is measured in a certain way.1 The last isn’t positively irrational, but it is no more rational than other possible actions, since there are infinitely (...) many other Nash equilibria besides the one in which both players bid 1/2. At the same time, these behaviors seem to indicate that people are sometimes inclined to be cooperative, fair, and just. In his stimulating new book, Brian Skyrms sets himself the task of showing why these inclinations evolved, or how they might have evolved, under the pressure of natural selection. The goal is not to justify our ethical intuitions, but to explain why we have them.2.. (shrink)
: Despite the historical importance of Francis Bacon's grand vision of science, the doctrine of Form that supports his program of works is now generally agreed to be incoherent. This paper will argue, however, that Bacon's belief in the convertibility of matter gains a previously unacknowledged coherence when approached through the treatment of axiom conversion expressed in Ramus' 1574 Dialectica. Ultimately this will lead to the conclusion that Bacon did not--like most twentieth-century philosophers--see the universe as a collection of (...) matter understood by humans in terms of law, but as a collection of laws understood in terms of matter. (shrink)
This ambitious and important book provides the first truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher. It describes how Bacon transformed the values that had underpinned philosophical culture since antiquity by rejecting the traditional idea of a philosopher as someone engaged in contemplation of the cosmos. The book explores in detail how and why Bacon attempted to transform the largely esoteric discipline of natural philosophy into a public practice through a program in which practical science provided a model (...) that inspired many from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Stephen Gaukroger shows that this reform of natural philosophy was dependent on the creation of a new philosophical persona: a natural philosopher shaped through submission to the dictates of Baconian method. This book will be recognized as a major contribution to Baconian scholarship, of special interest to historians of early-modern philosophy, science, and ideas. (shrink)
Elsewhere I have argued that the most significant threat to scientific realism arises from what I call the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to even conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be actually embraced in the course of further investigation. In this paper I explore Francis Galton’s development and (...) defense of his “stirp” theory of inheritance and conclude that this particular historical example offers impressive support for the challenge posed by the problem of unconceived alternatives while simultaneously showing how we can make that challenge deeper and sharper. (shrink)
This paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers (...) in the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved. (shrink)
In his recent article, ‘A Gift to Theology? Jean-Luc Marion's ‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective’, Brian Robinette has critiqued Marion's phenomenology for confining theology to a one-sided approach to Christology, one that stresses only the passive, mystical reception of Christ. To correct this imbalance, Robinette brings Marion into dialogue with those more active Christologies or ‘prophetical-ethical’ liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Johann Baptist Metz and others that stress a life-praxis focused on confronting evil and suffering. In this essay I (...) am arguing that Robinette has not fully developed the ‘logic’ of Marion's phenomenology of the ‘call and the gifted’, in which both a passive and an active element are operative. I explore more fully that very dynamic phenomenological process of the call-and-the-gifted as developed in Marion's work Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Once viewed in Christological perspective, and especially in light of Christ's death and resurrection, Marion's phenomenology entails an ethical trope consistent with the mission of Christ as rendered in Scriptural revelation, and thus the gap between Marion's work and the prophetical-ethical theologies of Gutierrez and Baptist Metz becomes narrowed. (shrink)
The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)
Zusammenfassung Während âLogik der Forschung als Wissenschaftstheorie sich längst etabliert hat, steht eine ebenso notwendige âEthik der Forschung als Wissenschaftsmoral noch aus. Dazu liefert die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Francis Bacon wichtige Bausteine: Allgemeines Menschheitswohl als letztes Ziel aller Forschung; Betonung des unabhängigen Selbstdenkens; Forschertugenden wie Wahrhaftigkeit, Hoffnung, Demut, Menschenliebe; Anerkennung von sittlichen Grenzen des Wissens. Hingegen ist zugunsten einer engagierten Eigenverantwortlichkeit der Wissenschaftler vor Bacons Unterwürfigkeit gegenüber der Staatsgewalt zu warnen.
It is well known that Francis of Marchia and William of Ockham joined Michael of Cesena's rebellion against the pope, together escaping from Avignon and signing documents supporting Cesena's defence of Franciscan poverty. The relationship between the works of the two thinkers, on the other hand, is the subject of ongoing investigation. After discussing Francis' rejection in his Commentary on the Sentences of Ockham's theory of quantity, this paper shows how Francis' Improbatio became a source for Ockham's (...) Opus Nonaginta Dierum. Building on Offler's ground-breaking critical edition of the latter work, it is argued that Ockham made extensive use of Francis' Improbatio, even though on several points he felt it necessary to reformulate the arguments of his confrère or even to substantially modify his positions. The two Franciscan theologians differed deeply both in their basic philosophical commitments and in their methodological attitude. These differences emerged even when they were—so to speak—fighting on the same front. (shrink)
Francis Allen, The Borderland of Criminal Justice: Essays in Law and Criminology Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964 Francis Allen, The Crimes of Politics: Political Dimensions of Criminal Justice Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974 Francis Allen, Law, Intellect, and Education Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979 Francis Allen, The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
The biocentric outlook on nature affirms our fellowship with other living creatures and portrays human beings as members of the Earth’s community who have equal moral standing with other living members of the community. A comparison of Paul Taylor’s biocentric theory of environmental ethics and the life and writings of St. Francis of Assisi reveals that Francis maintained a biocentric environmental ethic. This individualistc environmental ethic is grounded in biology and is unaffected by the paradigm shift in ecology (...) in which nature is regarded as in flux rather than tending toward equilibrium. A holistic environmental ethic that accords moral standing to holistic entities (species, ecosytems, biotic communities) is more vulnerable to these changes in ecology than an environmental ethic that accords moral standing to individuals. Another strength of biocentrism is its potential to provide a unified front across religious and scientific lines. (shrink)
This article offers the first critical edition of the most important version of Francis of Marchia's famous question 1 of his commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, in which the Franciscan theologian puts forth his virtus derelicta theory of projectile motion. The introduction attempts to place Marchia's theory in its proper context. The theory might seem to us an obvious improvement on Aristotle, but rather than an immediate and complete break with tradition that all scholastics quickly adopted, (...) Marchia's virtus derelicta was more a stage in a gradual process that had begun many decades before and did not find universal acceptance among his first successors. Moreover, Marchia himself did not take the theory to what might seem the obvious conclusion that Jean Buridan would draw, because Marchia employed the virtus derelicta to explain more phenomena than just projectile motion. (shrink)
This article takes as its point of departure the conviction that late medieval science should be studied in its own right, and not merely to determine whether it presaged developments in early modern science. Case in point: Francis of Marchia's theory of virtus derelicta, the theory that the motion of a projectile through the air is due to a force left behind by the original motive force. Certainly, Marchia's view is not a forerunner of inertia. Nevertheless, it is argued (...) that virtus derelicta breaks with two important Aristotelian principles of motion: "everything that has a beginning must necessarily also have an end" and "form is always indivisible." Thus, virtus derelicta is neither an Aristotelian solution to the problem of projectile motion nor a development on the road to early modern science; it belongs to a new (but subsequently undeveloped) understanding of motion. (shrink)
Francis of Marchia (c. 1290-1344) is said to have challenged Aristotelian orthodoxy by uniting the celestial and terrestrial realms in a way that has important implications for the practice of natural philosophy. But this over-looks Marchia's vital distinction between bare potentiality, which is actualizable only by God, and natural potency, which is the concern of the natural philosopher. If due attention is paid to this distinction and to its implications, Marchia's position no longer seems to be revolutionary.
One prominent evolutionist I know confided in me that he sometimes spends only an hour perusing a book that he has to review. I doubt if Brian Charlesworth spent even that much time with my book No Free Lunch. Charlesworth is a bright guy and could have done better. But no doubt he is also a busy guy. To save time and effort, it's therefore easier to put these crazy intelligent design creationists in their place rather than actually engage (...) the merits of their arguments. Charlesworth's review is riddled with caricatures and stereotypes. The amateurs at talk.origins frankly have done a much better job trying to critique me. (shrink)
One of the most exciting monuments in Candia, located on the island of Crete, was the Saint Francis Monastery. The church and monastery were situated on a natural hill, next to the city’s defensive walls on the east side. The elevated position of the buildings attracted the views of many inhabitants and voyagers.2 It was a medieval tradition to position the church at the apex of a hill with the monastery below it.3 The first one to study this monastery (...) thoroughly was the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Gerola (1877–1938). In the present day an attempt is being made to collect all available information about the monastery. Almost nothing of worth is known about the establishment of the monastery. Gerola .. (shrink)
Scholars have recently noted the interest of Guibert of Tournai’s sermons on Francis of Assisi. Nicole Bériou partially edited Guibert’s sermon Surrexit Helyas, focusing on the theme of prophecy, in 1994,1 and Sean Field edited two more, Inflammatum est cor meum and Veni columba mea, highlighting the theme of Francis as a perfected soul through annihilation, in 1999.2 The two yet unexamined works in Guibert’s corpus of sermons discussing Francis hold their own interest, as they discuss an (...) important topos in Franciscan literature of the mid-thirteenth century. The present article edits and analyzes these two previously unedited sermons for the first time.3 This topos is the Biblical quotation Vidi .. (shrink)
While much has been written about social justice, even more has been written about democracy. Rarely is the relationship between social justice and democracy carefully considered. Does justice require democracy? Will democracy bring justice? This volume brings together leading authors who consider the relationship of democracy and justice. The intrinsic justness of democracy is challenged and the relationship between justice, democracy and the common good examined.
Francis’ view of nature has been seen as positive in an ecological sense even by those who are for the most part critical of Christianity’s attitude to nature, such as Lynn White, Jr. I argue that one element of Francis’ uniqueness was that he saw the diversity of life as an expression of God’s creativity and benevolence and attempted to carry out that vision in ethical behavior. Much of what has been written about him has precedents in traditional (...) hagiography, but there remains an unmistakable impression of originality. It has been noted that Francis insisted on the goodness of creation, used terms of family relationship to refer to creatures other than human, and preached to them. However, another element has escaped notice: his emphasis on the presence of God in the diversity of created entities and his desire that humans should rejoice in this diversity and glorify God for it and with it. His devotion did not immediately dissolve multiplicity into oneness, but glorified God in each created being and delighted in their individuality. He advocated that praise be expressed by acting in ways consistent with respect for created diversity, not only by observing a strict rule of abstaining from harm to living beings, but also in positive treatment of all creatures. Nature took its meaning not from its serviceability to mankind, but from its expression of the multiple forms of God’s benevolent presence. (shrink)
Patrick O'Brian, the Aubrey-Maturin Series of twenty novels (Norton, 1970-1999). My appreciation written for WIRED magazine: "I re-read this extraordinary series of novels because of the depth of portrayal of the major and minor characters, but also because they teach me so much about what science and technology were like two centuries ago. O'Brian shows you the world-that-was through the eyes of a Tory naval captain (Jack Aubrey), at sea since the age of 12, working his way up (...) to admiral, dealing with the height of 18th-century technology (sailing ships and celestial navigation). I identify more strongly with his liberally-educated, physician-scientist friend (Stephen Maturin), who went to medical school in Paris during the French Revolution. You see natural history turning into a biological science, bleeding-and-purging medicine starting to learn some physiology -- and, because Maturin is also an intelligence agent for the Admiralty, you see statecraft at work during the Napoleonic Wars. These books strongly remind you about what scientific ignorance and social conventions can do to your mindset, and how the future will likely judge us as well." -- William H. Calvin You can get them all at once, so you can: The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Series (20 volumes). Depending on amazon.com's current discount, this works out to US$15-20 each (and in hardcover). (shrink)
This volume belongs to the critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an edition that presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume contains critical editions of five varied works Bacon composed during the 1620s. The most significant and substantial of these five works is his biography of Henry VII (The historie of the raigne of King Henry the seventh) but the volume testifies as well (...) to Bacon's continuing robust allegiance to his youthful vaunt that all knowledge was his province, for it also includes his sketch for a biography of Henry VIII, An advertisement touching an holy war (a thoughtful debate over the prospect of holy war in his own time), Apophthegmes (a lively collection of witty anecdotes, classical to early modern), and his select verse translations from the psalms. In each case an authoritative text has been established based upon fresh collation of the relevant manuscripts and of multiple copies of the seventeenth editions, and subjected to a thorough bibliographical analysis of the treatment of Bacon's texts in the early modern printing-house. The Introductions discuss the occasion and context for each work, evaluate his creative transmutation of his sources, and weigh their contemporary reception. A comprehensive commentary identifies and parses Bacon's use of source material, from his refinement of published literary and historical sources and contemporary MSS to the political white papers composed while he served as counsellor to King James. An extensive glossary is integrated into this commentary. An Appendix provides full bibliographical descriptions of all of the textual witnesses, manuscript and printed edition. (shrink)
Why was it that Francis Bacon, trained for high political office, devoted himself to proposing a celebrated and sweeping reform of the natural sciences? Julian Martin's investigative study looks at Bacon's family context, his employment in Queen Elizabeth's security service and his radical critique of the relationship between the Common Law and the Monarchy, to find the key to this important question. Deeply conservative and elitist in his political views, Bacon adapted Tudor strategies of State management and bureaucracy, the (...) social anxieties and prejudices of the late-Elizabethan governing elite, and a principal intellectual resource of the English governing classes - the Common Law - into a novel vision and method for the sciences. Bacon's axiom that 'Knowledge is Power' takes on far-reaching implications in Martin's challenging argument that the reform of natural philosophy was a central part of an audacious plan to strengthen the powers of the Crown in the State. (shrink)
This work provides an original account of Francis Bacon's conception of natural inquiry. P'erez-Ramos sets Bacon in an epistemological tradition that postulates an intimate relation between objects of cognition and objects of construction, and regards the human knower as, fundamentally, a maker. By exploring the background to this tradition, and contrasting the responses of major philosophers of the 17th century with Bacon's own, the book charts Bacon's contribution to the modern philosophy of science.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a genuine midwife of modernity. He was one of the first thinkers to visualise a future which would be guided by a cooperative science-based vision of bettering human welfare. In this the first critical edition of his greatest philosophical work since the nineteenth-century, we find facing-page Latin translations and a thorough and detailed Introduction to the text.
Volume XI of The Oxford Francis Bacon comprises the first new critical edition of Bacon's most important philosophical work, the Novum Organum, for a hundred years. One of the foundation documents of early-modern philosophy, Novum Organum is edited in accordance with modern textual-critical principles for the first time. Graham Rees presents the only edition ever to include the original Latin text with a brand new, facing-page translation, and a thorough Introduction and detailed commentary of the text. The edition represents (...) a major step towards the reinstatement of Bacon as a central figure in the history of early-modern philosophy, and will be essential reading for anyone studying the history of science and ideas in the seventeenth-century. (shrink)
Examining the moral sense theories of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith from the perspective of the is-ought problem, this essay shows that the moral sense or moral sentiments in those theories alone cannot identify appropriate morals. According to one interpretation, Hume's or Smith's theory is just a description of human nature. In this case, it does not answer the question of how we ought to live. According to another interpretation, it has some normative implications. In this case, (...) it draws normative claims from human nature. Anyway, the sentiments of anger, resentment, vengeance, superiority, sympathy, and benevolence show that drawing norms from human nature is sometimes morally problematic. The changeability of the moral sense and moral sentiments in Hume's and Smith's theories supports this idea. Hutcheson's theory is morally more appropriate because it bases morality on disinterested benevolence. Yet disinterested benevolence is not enough for morality. There are no sentiments the presence of which alone makes any action moral. (shrink)
Applied analytical political philosophy has not been a thriving enterprise in the United States in recent years. Certainly it has made little discernible impact on public culture. Political philosophers absorb topics and ideas from the Zeitgeist, but it shows little inclination to return the favor. After the publication of his monumental work A Theory of Justice back in 1971, John Rawls became a deservedly famous intellectual, but who has ever heard political critics or commentators refer to the difference principle or (...) fair equality of opportunity in discussions aimed at a wide audience? Writing philosophically astute and beautifully accessible prose, often in not strictly academic journals of opinion, Ronald Dworkin has been in some ways the very model of a public intellectual, but the only reference to his opinions that I have seen in any newspaper occurred in a New York Times review of a restaurant near London along the Thames (as I recall, Dworkin was quoted as saying it was at the very least the best restaurant in the northern hemisphere). You might chalk up the situation to the fact that political philosophers tend to be liberal and the public political culture in the United States has been growing decidedly conservative, but that mismatch can hardly be the whole story. Right-wing libertarianism is a popular doctrine, but Robert Nozick’s classical and never superseded 1974 exploration of that view in his brilliant Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not cited. Nor is there a significant literature that seeks to derive practical policy recommendations from Nozick’s theory and relevant factual claims. Moreover, the isolation of political philosophy stands in marked contrast to the wide influence of theory in some disciplines. For example, consider the enormous germinating impact of Richard Posner’s ideas on law and economics over the past thirty years on academic and extra-academic American legal culture. (shrink)
Hutcheson’s theory of morality shares far more common ground with Clarke’s morality than is generally acknowledged. In fact, Hutcheson’s own view of his innovations in moral theory suggest that he understood moral sense theory more as an elaboration and partial correction to Clarkean fitness theory than as an outright rejection of it. My aim in this paper will be to illuminate what I take to be Hutcheson’s grounds for adopting this attitude toward Clarkean fitness theory. In so doing, I hope (...) to bring to light an otherwise unexpected continuity between moral sense theory and the moral rationalism to which it is usually opposed, and, in so doing, draw attention to the anti-sceptical realism that lies at the heart of both accounts. (shrink)
In this essay reviewing Brian Leiter’s recent book Naturalizing Jurisprudence, I focus on two positions that distinguish Leiter’s reading of the American legal realists from those offered in the past. The first is his claim that the realists thought the law is only locally indeterminate – primarily in cases that are appealed. The second is his claim that they did not offer a prediction theory of law, but were instead committed to a standard positivist theory. Leiter’s reading is vulnerable, (...) because he fails to discuss in detail those passages from the realists that inspired past interpretations. My goal is to see how Leiter’s reading fares when these passages are considered. I argue that Leiter is right that the realists’ indeterminacy thesis has only a local scope. Those passages that appear to claim that the law is globally indeterminate actually address three other topics: judicial supremacy, judges’ roles as finders of fact, and the moral obligation to adjudicate as the law commands. With respect to the prediction theory, however, I conclude that Leiter’s position cannot be defended. Indeed the realists offered two “prediction” theories of law. According to the first, which is best described as a decision theory, the law concerning an event is whatever concrete judgment a court will issue when the event is litigated. According to the second, the law is reduced, not to concrete judgments, but to regularities of judicial (and other official) behavior in a jurisdiction. I end this essay with the suggestion that the realists’ advocacy of the second prediction theory indirectly vindicates Leiter’s reading of the realists as prescient jurisprudential naturalists. (shrink)
