Science without Conscience (1952)

Abstract

Knowledge is power. The realization was Bacon’s: Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. But power corrupts, and Bacon — the Cambridge alumnus taking all knowledge for his province, the Lord Chancellor found guilty of corruption — demonstrated the incompatibility of the serpent and the dove. Hence the parable of Baldock in Edward II, the prodigal scholar corrupted by worldli-ness, was not uniquely applicable to Marlowe; given full scope, it could and did become an allegory for his century. Earlier in that century, Rabelais had voiced its self-conscious expansiveness in the famous letter purporting to have been written by the allegorical giant, Gargantua, to his even more gigantic son, Panta-gruel. More than a father’s thoughtful advice to a student, this was a medieval salute to the great instauration of humanism. Hailing the revival of the classics and the investigations into nature, it was charged with awareness of their potentialities for good — and likewise for evil. If the late invention of printing was an angelic inspiration, obviously gunpowder had been invented by diabolical suggestion.