Abstract
This paper shows how Bacon is, on the one hand, still anchored to the idea of contingency as an intrinsic and ontological trait of natural phenomena, though he provides a significatively different explanation than the one of Scholastic-Aristotelianism; and on the other, how his focus on the notion of “pretergeneration” (that is, nature’s spontaneous generation of monsters and errors), functional to his philosophical agenda, aimed at mastering nature through art, represents a strong detachment from the Aristotelian idea that science only concerns phenomena happening necessarily for the most part. Pretergeneration, this paper shows, is understood by Bacon as a result of the Fall. For Bacon, matter, as well as humans, started to behave in such a way as to follow not only the general good, but also individual the one. It is this particular feature that renders possible the deviations from the usual course of nature. Interestingly, Bacon does not see a direct contradiction between the idea of the existence of eternal laws of nature, imposed by God at the moment of the creation, and the fact that matter, either through pretergeneration or manipulation, can eventually deviate from such laws. Indeed, Bacon identifies the Fall as the moment when the possibility for “alternative things,” that is, contingent deviations from the laws of nature, can take place. As a result, matter can be “seduced” – that is, driven away by the course it would otherwise follow through human manipulation – in order to create new objects. At the same time, external conditions can determine spontaneous deviations from the natural course. Contingency, in this view, is therefore seen as both the result of human manipulation as well as an intrinsic character of nature.
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Notes
- 1.
Daston and Park argue that Bacon’s (together with Descartes’ and Boyle’s) focus on wonder as part of the study of nature “marked a unique moment in the history of European natural philosophy, unprecedented and unrepeated” (Daston and Park 1998, p. 13. For a discussion on how Bacon broke with the metaphysics of natural philosophy, see the section “Baconian Reform,” pp. 220–231).
- 2.
On the idea of pretergenerations as model for artificial objects, see Weeks 2007a, p. 76, and 2007b, pp. 116–117: “Marvels or ‘Pretergenerations’ are of particular interest to Bacon because they demonstrate that matter’s dormant powers can come into play even in fixed systems.” Weeks argues that new objects exist in nature in potency and is the duty of art to make them actual. Pretergenerations are in this context the proof that nature did not bring about all its possibilities.
- 3.
A similar definition of pretergenerations can be found also in the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis: nature is “quite forced and ripped from its state by the crookedness and arrogance of defiant and rebellious matter, and by the violence of impediments, as in the monsters and heteroclites of nature” (OFB VI, p. 101).
- 4.
The same distinction is to be found also in the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis: individuals which are singular in their species and those which deviate represent different categories and are considered to be “two kinds of individuals” (OFB VI, p. 101).
- 5.
In the same aphorism of the Novum Organum, Bacon describes another kind of instances, which seem not to appear in the classification from The Advancement or the De Augmentis, namely, the Frontier Instances or Participles. These individuals are made up of two different species, or they are rudiments that exist in nature between one species and another. For this reason the above mentioned instances are in between monadic and deviating instances (OFB XI, p. 301).
- 6.
In her presentation “Pretergenerations and strange facts in Sylva Sylvarum,” Silva Manzo also distinguished between a broad notion of pretergeneration (what is rare and unusual in both species and individuals) and a narrow notion (individual deviations from the ordinary course of nature).
- 7.
In a very broad sense, Bacon uses the term “simple natures” also when referring to simple motions, as in the De Augmentis. However, in a strong sense, only the schematisms are simple natures, the discovery of which represents the aim of metaphysics: as we will see, the simple motions are part of the forms of simple natures in the strict sense. Thus they do not have forms; they are their constituents. This is why when I use the term “simple nature,” I only refer to schematisms.
- 8.
The forms of substances are “so perplexed and complicated, that it is either vain to inquire into them at all, or such inquiry as is possible should be put off for a time, and not entered upon until forms of a more simple nature have been rightly investigated and discovered” (SEH IV, p. 360).
- 9.
This identification between forms and the laws of pure acts comes back again a few times in the Novum Organum. For example, in aphorism 75 of the first book: “forms or the true differences of things (which are really the laws of pure act)” (OFB XI, pp. 119–20); aphorism 17 of the second book: “when I speak of forms, I mean nothing other than those laws and determinations of a pure act which regulate and constitute any simple nature, like heat, lumen, weight, in every kind of matter and susceptible subject” (OFB XI, p. 255); or aphorism 52 of the same book, which explains the aim of his philosophy as being to “discover the virtues and acts of bodies, and their laws as they are determined in matter” (OFB XI, p. 443). John Milton considers that Bacon’s system is not coherent and is full of problems precisely because of this identify of forms and laws (Milton 1998, p. 686).
- 10.
“For the form of any nature is such that if it be in place the given nature invariably follows. Thus it is constantly present when that nature is present, and universally asserts it, and inheres in the whole of it. The same form is such that if it departs, the given nature infallibly disappears. Thus it is always absent when that nature is absent, and always withholds it, and inheres in it not at all. Lastly, a true form is such that it draws up the given nature from some source of being which inheres in many other things, and is (as they have it) better known to nature than the form itself” (OFB XI, p. 205).
- 11.
Bacon also made an analysis of the form of white in the early unpublished Valerius Terminus (SEH III, pp. 215–232). However, colors don’t appear in any list of simple natures, and from analyzing the discussion about colors existing in the Sylva Sylvarum, one gets the impression that they depend upon other simple natures. This is the reason I chose to analyze here only the definition of heat from the Novum Organum.
- 12.
When discussing the form of heat, Bacon does not use the same names of the motions as those from the list in the Abecedarium Novum Naturae or aphorism 48 of the second book of the Novum Organum. However, upon comparing their definitions, there is no doubt he refers to the same motions. These are the motions of hyle, of spontaneous rotation, and of trepidation. The measurement is the measurement of time and intensity, both being listed among letters of the alphabet in the Abecedarium. For the entire discussion concerning the relations between the motions representing the form of heat, and those from the two mentioned lists, see Rusu 2013, pp. 192–197; for a more detailed analysis of Bacon’s concept of motion, see Manzo 2004; for another interpretation of the definition of heat, see Weeks 2007a, pp. 219–246; for a more general discussion about the relation between forms and induction, see Hesse 1968, Jardine 1974, Urbach, 1978, pp. 187–190.
- 13.
Weeks discusses the concept of “limitation” not as simple natures limiting each other to compose a form but as forms limiting each other to create composed bodies (Weeks 2007a, pp. 203ff.). I take both uses to be true. As we will see, motions and forms behave in analogous ways.
- 14.
It is true that Bacon refers only to heat when saying that its relation to motion is that of a species to the genus. There are, however, strong reasons to believe that in fact he considers that all simple natures stay in the same relationship with motion and that he only mentions heat because, of course, that was the subject of the inquiry. One of these reasons is Bacon’s definition of form as “the law of pure act.” In the first book of the Novum Organum, Bacon identifies “act” and “motion.” Forms are defined here as the laws of acts or motions: “We should rather focus on matter, its schematisms and metaschematisms, and the pure act and the law of that act or motion. For forms are fictions of the human soul, except when you want to call those laws governing the act forms” (OFB XI, p. 89).
- 15.
Silvia Manzo has a different interpretation. She considers that pretergenerations are the result of the Fall of the formal cause because the new individuals do not have a form since they are different from the form of the species they should belong to (Manzo 2006, pp. 65–67). Though I consider this last observation to be true, I think it is not correct to assume that pretergenerations represent the proof of the fallen formal cause, given that Bacon connects them in the Novum Organum with the efficient and formal causes.
- 16.
In the De Principiis Atque Originibus, Bacon presents two laws of nature: of the constant quantity of matter and of its continuity: “For as matter will not be overthrown by matter, so matter will not be separated from matter” (OFB VI, p. 261). This type of laws of nature, which are to be found also in the De Augmentis when defining the primary philosophy, is a general axiom which can, and should, be common to all sciences (on primary or summary philosophy, see SEH IV, p. 338 and ff.). In this way they transcend the realm of natural philosophy.
- 17.
In the same De Principiis Atque Originibus, Bacon mentions that what he calls “the ultimate force and positive law of nature,” namely, that the primary matter, its virtue and action, cannot have any cause, except for God (OFB VI, p. 199). In other words, primary matter has the status of being the principle of the world: the highest law of essence and nature (lex enim summa essentiae atque naturae). He says that the “force impressed by God on the primary particles” is that “from the multiplications of which all the variety of things arises and comes into being” (OFB VI, p. 201). This summary law cannot be the subject of natural philosophy, since it presents the principles of the natural world. I take the same meaning to apply to the way in which Bacon uses the term “law” in A confession of faith, where “law” and “nature” are synonyms (SEH VII, p. 220).
- 18.
In the second aphorism of the second book of the Novum Organum, Bacon criticizes the view according to which material and efficient causes are considered something distinct from the latent process (OFB XI, p. 201). There should be thus no surprise that Bacon assigns to abstract physics either the investigation of latent processes or the investigation of efficient and material causes of simple natures; it does not mean that physics has more domains of investigation.
- 19.
Bacon adds to this enumeration: “Nor again should we seek out these things just in the generation and transformation of bodies; but in all other alterations and motions should we likewise inquire what comes before, what after; what is faster, what slower; what supplies motion, what rules it; and things of that kind. But to the sciences (spun as they now are from the weakest and meanest minds) all these things are unknown and untried” (OFB XI, p. 211).
- 20.
After completing the list of simple motions in the Abecedarium, Bacon adds: “So now we must move on to motions compounded and interwoven and like threads spun together, to the sums of motions which may evidently arise from the aggregation and control of the simple motions. Yet we call all of these motions too, and no wonder seeing that after many simple motions the matter is brought to a particular conclusion, i.e. to a remarkable state or alteration” (OFB XIII, p. 203).
- 21.
Because natural processes are in general very complex (several simple natures change at the same time) in many of his experiments, Bacon isolates simple processes in order to be able to determine the exact cause-effect relationship. This knowledge can be later used in analyzing or producing more complex phenomena.
- 22.
“For it is the seed, and the nature of it, which locketh and boundeth in the creature, that it doth not expatiate” (SEH II, pp. 507–508).
- 23.
The distinction between pneumatic and tangible matter (the first being active and the second passive) is one of the most important ideas of Bacon’s speculative philosophy, with a central role in experimentation (see esp. SEH II, pp. 380–382). For an analysis of this, see Rees 1975, 1977, 1996; and Manzo 2006, pp. 32–43.
- 24.
In the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis, generations are those individuals which appear when nature is free, in the sense that it is “left to go its own way and unfold itself in its usual course” and it “advances by itself without being interfered with or worked on in any way, as in the heavens, animals, plants and the whole order of nature” (OFB VI, p. 101).
- 25.
The connection between growth and generation is very strong. There is growth in the mother’s womb (or in the egg or in the seed). Bacon presents the development of the embryo as “perfection and ripening” (SEH II, p. 457).
- 26.
Melioration is used to make fruits sweeter or bigger, to change the color of flowers, etc. However, by no means, one could say the new individual is a new species or a deviation from the given one. Degeneration is the opposite of melioration. An individual from a species returns to its previous condition if it is no longer cultivated to develop certain features. At the end of the series of experiments on degeneration (518–525), Bacon explains degeneration in terms of species but mentions that culture, which had made species change, gives only an “adventitious nature, which is more easily put off” (SEH II, p. 507). The sense in which Bacon refers here to “species” seems to be a very weak one, before he had been using the term “kind.” In fact, the same methods used for melioration of fruits are now those that are absent when degeneration takes place. As soon as this help disappears, the plant cannot continue to have the same characteristics, which means the innate spirit contained in the seed cannot develop into that plant by itself. On melioration and degeneration and on plants as central for Bacon’s natural philosophical investigation, see Rusu 2017.
- 27.
I will only focus on the rules for transmutation for two main reasons. First, they are very clearly formulated, while in the case of melioration, the theoretical level is almost missing from the various experiments concerned with different changes which lead to the melioration of fruits. Second, and more important, the means are very similar. But in order to have transmutation of species, the techniques are taken to an extreme.
- 28.
Bacon considers that spontaneous generation is the model of transmutation of species (SEH II, pp. 508–509), and in general he is very interested in both plants and animals created out of putrefaction through spontaneous generation. (On Bacon’s concept of spontaneous generation and its implications for his natural philosophy, see Rusu 2018.) In this particular example, I think Bacon is emphasizing the central role of nourishment (and material cause) in the case of spontaneous generation. Given that there is no native spirit to create a configured plant, what gives specificity to the new individual is the type of nourishment. This explains why, from the same earth, different plants can be created. Of course, the pneumatic matter which models the tangible parts also has different characteristics, and this influences the way in which the plant will develop, but the characteristics of the juices of the earth, which play the role of efficient matter, are as important as those of the spirits. This is Bacon’s suggestion when he claims that earth itself is qualified to give specific nourishment.
- 29.
On the central role of the appetites in Sylva, see Giglioni 2010.
- 30.
On the stages of nature, see Manzo 2006, pp. 45–67 and esp. 62–67n for a discussion on the characteristics of the fallen nature.
- 31.
On this alternative universe of things and on arts as imitating the moment of creation, see Weeks 2007a, pp. 73ff and 203–270.
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The study for this paper was financially supported partly by the CNCS project From Natural History to Science. The Emergence of Experimental Philosophy, PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0719, and partly by the NWO Veni grant Manipulating Spiritual Matter. How Did Early Modern Science Become Experimental? I would like to thank Mădălina Giurgea, the participants to the Second Workshop on Contingency (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, May 2015), and the editors of this volume for the very useful comments on the first draft of this paper.
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Rusu, DC. (2019). Manipulating Matter and Its Appetites: Francis Bacon on Causation and the Creation of Preternaturals. In: Omodeo, P.D., Garau, R. (eds) Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 332. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67378-3_9
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