Political Faith and Utopian Thought

Abstract

In the three and a half centuries since Bacon and the miller prayed for peace among the willows, countless men and women have joined them in that prayer. Instead of peace, they have found storms, gales, and hurricanes. Yet, in these storms, the water mill has been well customed. Despite Bacon’s fears, controversies between Protestant and Catholic did not hinder the advancement of science. Nor have other controversies which sometimes look like religious controversies, like that between east and west. It is not peace that has brought science, but science has flourished without peace, and we begin to wonder whether Bacon did not confuse the end and the means. So we pray, not for peace to bring science, but for science to bring peace. And when we rise, lonely and frightened, from our unanswered prayer, we are told that prayer implies faith, and we must have faith in science. We must trust our capacity to control the instruments of destruction we have devised. It is strange to reflect that after these centuries we have deviated so far from one of the founders of our own science that the object of our faith and prayer seems, at first glance, to have been not Bacon’s object, but Bacon’s instrument.