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Stanley Fish, in a renowned essay on Bacon\u2019s Essays <\/em> , concludes that the essays are \u201cunfinished with a purposefulness that makes the bestowing of the adjective less a criticism than a compliment.\u201d He insists on the provisionality of knowledge, and \u201ccommunicates that provisionality [in the Essays <\/em> ] by letting the information he has collected spill out of an organizational scheme that remains visible and compelling despite its obvious failure.\u201d Yet, \u201cthe style of the essays, their manner or presentation, simultaneously gestures toward Bacon\u2019s goal \u2013 the orderly disposition of everything in the universe \u2013 while acknowledging his (and our) distance from it. In their incompleteness and unresolved complication, the Essays <\/em> reflect the genuine, if paradoxical, humility of a man who could hope that what he began would end someday in \u2018the discovery of all operations and possibilities of operations from immortality (if it were possible) to the meanest mechanical practice.\u201d <\/p>\n This one crucial point of difference radically separates Bacon and his program from his predecessors: Bacon seeks rigor and makes finer and finer distinctions in order to provide a comprehensive theoretical portrait of the world, while for Plato and Donne making distinctions is \u201ca preliminary stage, a clearing away of the ground before the mind prepares to transcend the empirical.\u201d Both Bacon\u2019s induction and Plato\u2019s dialectic proceeds by fits and starts, for Bacon \u201cthis is merely a condition of a present imperfection in our knowledge.\u201d Eventually, the procedure of induction will \u201cestablish a succession of related certainties, and when the big picture is complete, the entire body of knowledge will be capable of tabular representation which will, at a glance, specify temporal and spatial relationships of cause and effect.\u201d Right method will provide an \u201cunbroken route through the woods of experience to the open ground of axioms,\u201d while for Plato and Donne the \u201cmoment of insight is a moment of revelation.\u201d <\/p>\n Bacon\u2019s cautions about the progress of knowledge, evident in the structure and style of his Essays <\/em> , is not, as in Anglican sermons, a reminder that \u201cthe job can never be done, at least not by rational means or rational beings,\u201d but only a \u201c\u2018caution\u2019 against assuming too easily that the job is done.\u201d Someday, Bacon is sure, the job will be done. <\/p>\n As Fish summarizes, both dialectic and induction aim to change the mind, but the latter does it superficially: \u201cMethod provides \u2018helps\u2019 to the mind, protects it from itself, neutralizes its distorting tendencies, prevents it from concluding prematurely, and makes of it an unprejudiced reporter or mirror of the way (earthly) things are. The effects of method, however, are negative and temporary, for while it fits the mind to perform certain mechanical operations, it does so at the expense of a personal point of view (the first person is, after all, one of the idols that method filters out) and therefore at the expense of a personal commitment. Method, in short, bypasses the soul, instituting controls rather than demanding a reorientation.\u201d Dialectic centers on the soul, asking not \u201cfor reform or restraint, but for revolution; it does not polish, but purges; it does not delay, but extirpates self-satisfaction; it does not make the mind capable, but unmakes the mind.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stanley Fish, in a renowned essay on Bacon\u2019s Essays , concludes that the essays are \u201cunfinished with a purposefulness that makes the bestowing of the adjective less a criticism than a compliment.\u201d He insists on the provisionality of knowledge, and \u201ccommunicates that provisionality [in the Essays ] by letting the information he has collected spill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n
Commenting on Bacon\u2019s similarity and distance from Plato, Augustine, and all ancient and modern advocates of dialectic, Fish notes that \u201cThe Truth to which the understanding will be made \u2018fit and proportionable\u2019 is for Plato, Augustine, and Donne a truth above the phenomenal world, while for Bacon it is a truth about the phenomenal world.\u201d <\/p>\n