Science and democracy do not mix.
A republic, on the other hand, is a different matter. Democracy is a term that gets thrown around far too easily, as if it were some kind of political vocabulary quiz, wherein the object of the game is to define a term as vaguely as possible and hope everyone will approve and no one will question it. In this chapter, I will argue that it is a republic, not a democracy, that contains three core ideas and ideals that we all seem to take for granted: individual liberty, individual rights, and the rule of law. These ideas and ideals stemmed directly from the development of modern natural science. Democracy, in the direct translation of that word from the Greek, “rule by the people,” contains none of these elements. A republic does. Crucially, it was the development of the modern scientific method that, above all else, brought the intellectual and social tools to bear in the creation of these political ideas.
Even Aristotle knew that democracy was a “deviation” from a “correct” form government. In The Politics, he stated that “it is proper to consider not only what is the best constitution but also what is the one possible of achievement, and likewise also what is the one that is easier and more generally shared by all states [and] could be preserved for the longest time.”1 In his view, there were only three “correct” types of regimes: a monarchy, which in the original Greek meant “rule by the one”; an aristocracy, which meant “rule by the best”; and what he termed a “polity,” which he described as a form of government wherein the people had an indirect say through the election of representatives in how laws should be formed. He declared that the deviate forms of these three were tyranny, rule by one dictator; oligarchy, rule by the few; and democracy, wherein the populous makes decisions collectively on every law of governance.
In Book Four of The Politics, he carefully describes the different forms democracy can take, and the potentially disastrous pitfalls of each. His conclusion? When the people themselves rule directly, there will be self-interests that will inevitably result in injustice to much of the population. For when the population votes, the majority always wins the day. Thus, fifty-percent plus one person of the population will always make the final decision for all the rest. Thus, he concluded, “for where the laws do not rule there is no regime. The law should rule in all matters, while the offices and the regime should judge in particular cases.”2 The form of government that fulfills these criteria is what Aristotle called a polity. We today call that a republic.
The framers of the Constitution of the United States agreed. As James Madison so eloquently pointed out in The Federalist Papers, democracy can in no way ameliorate, let alone cure what he called “the mischiefs of faction.” Democracies, he argued, “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention” wherein there is “nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.”3 A republic, on the other hand, which in his words is “a form of government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure [for faction].”4
The framers of the Constitution in general, and James Madison in particular, knew full well that a just government was one that was administered by and for the people. He also knew full well that people are not perfect. According to him, if there is any hope that justice is to be maintained, the powers of government must be separated, and a system of checks and balances must be in place. Relying on one leader is not the answer. As he put it, “It is vain to say that Enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”5 Instead, he proposed a different solution to this thorny political problem:
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected to the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.6
Thus, while he does acknowledge that the primary control on government must be the people themselves, he is careful to conclude that “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”7 In other words, we need a plan B. That plan is a republic. It is characterized by the separation of powers within the government, and most importantly, by the rule of law. Laws no one is exempt from, not the rulers nor the ruled, and laws that are public, transparent, and applied universally.
Therefore, to ask if natural science and democracy are in any way compatible, the answer is a resounding No. But to ask if natural science and a republic are compatible, the answer is an emphatic Yes. In fact, historically, philosophically, and ideologically, they are inextricably linked.
Natural science contains an ethic. I will elaborate.
The key to the ethic of natural science unlocks a door to nothing less than the origins of how an entirely new form of political thought came into being. A form of political thought based on the rule of law, which led to the ideas of individual liberty, individual freedom, and the audacious notion that we are capable of thinking for ourselves. To understand this remarkable progression? We are going to need some Bacon.
In 1620, which I date as the true dawn of the Enlightenment, Francis Bacon wrote the most influential of his works, The New Organon. “Organon” in Latin means tool, hence he intended to lay out a completely new method, a new way of thinking about the natural world. In the process, he did nothing less than inspire the inception of modern natural science, which in turn led to a revolution in political thought.
Bacon had published a work in 1605, The Advancement of Learning, which was his earliest attempt to formulate his thoughts on the status of knowledge and learning and the insufficiency of both as practiced. The work contains two parts. In the first, Bacon lauds the excellence of knowledge in general and learning in particular, and the value of augmenting and propagating both. In the second, he takes stock of which subjects have been embraced and which have been undervalued. Bacon begins with an argument as to why learning itself must be advanced, and why it is against neither the will of God nor the interests of the state to do so. Bacon wished to deliver knowledge “from the discredits and disgraces which it hath received, all from ignorance, but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines, sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politicians, and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.”8 Thus, he states that the clergy considers knowledge as something to accept with great caution and only within limits. As he put it, for them to desire too much knowledge would be tantamount to giving in to temptation, and therefore sinful. Bacon's argument against this well-known objection was made on religious grounds, while he was careful to emphasize that knowledge should not be sought out of vanity.
It is crucial to remember that before Francis Bacon wrote, it was taken for granted in the West that all “legitimate” forms of knowledge had long been established, thus philosophically and religiously authoritative. In short, they were held to be unquestionable. Beginning a theme that would dominate The New Organon, Bacon disparagingly notes that authors receive the status of dictators, “and not consuls to give advice.”9 The resulting damage to the natural sciences, he laments, “is infinite,” and “the principal cause that hath kept them low, at a stay, without growth or advancement.”10 Between the willful ignorance of physical causes and the unquestioned authority of the ancient Greeks and the Christian church, the advancement of knowledge at the dawn of the seventeenth century was at a virtual standstill. Throughout his works, Bacon railed against unquestioned authority, which he argued is the most pernicious enemy of all.
Bacon set out to transform the state of knowledge with a new tool, or organon, for the advancement of knowledge. Real learning, according to Bacon, had been all but halted by unquestioned authority, be it religious or political. The result of this was that all progression of knowledge had ceased. Bacon's plan for the restructuring of human knowledge would not simply challenge what had been unquestionable, it would change the entire focus of the enterprise. His radical idea was that instead of looking up to heaven for mystical answers to divine phenomena, humankind must look to the earth and seek out the physical causes of natural phenomena. Bacon argued that there was only one way of seeking out and discovering truth: by deriving “axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.”11 This formed the basis of his inductive method, and it would remain the principal method of scientific inquiry for centuries after his death. Bacon's views on the proper role of religion in the state are very much linked with his exhortations to advance knowledge of the natural world. The dethroning of religion from its place of dominance in matters of philosophy echoed through the following centuries and became perhaps the most controversial hallmark of modern science, which, embarrassingly enough, persists to this day.
Heated debate over the proper relationship between religion, science, and politics is hardly new to the twenty-first century. Natural and political philosophers alike have wrestled with this question since Bacon first proposed the separation of religious concerns, not only from scientific concerns but from political concerns as well. He reasoned that while religious extremism leads to violence, and politics all too often leads to the promotion of self-interest and the interests of the few over the good of the many, a focus on scientific accomplishments could ameliorate both and lead to political peace. “Of Unity in Religion,” a vignette appearing in Bacon's Essays, helps illustrate Bacon's stance on the role religion should play in politics. Bacon considered the religious controversies of the day to be the result of extreme religious views, and in this essay he wrote that where the bounds of religious unity are concerned, the goal of extremists is war. For “certain zealants,” he writes, “all speech of pacification is odious. […] Peace is not the matter, but following and party.”12
John Locke would make a similar argument in the Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke understood Bacon's main point in his literary dialogue An Advertisement Touching a Holy War. Mixing religion with politics leads to violence, hence wars for the sake of religion should neither be encouraged nor condoned.13 The Advertisement is an important contribution to the debate on the role of religion vis-à-vis the state, its politics, and its foreign policy. Ultimately, the dialogue is concerned with the political consequences of those all-too-frequent companions, religious fundamentalism and military zeal. Bacon's ideal of a moderate Christianity is reflected in many of his works. Most notably among these are The New Organon, The Advancement of Learning, Essays, and The New Atlantis, a utopian fable about an advanced, peaceful island community where natural science holds sway. Throughout these works run the theme of transforming human knowledge and philosophy, moving both away from a dependence on received doctrine, and toward a separation of religion and political majority from scientific inquiry.
Bacon thought that we can maintain religious faith but not let it interfere with scientific investigation. Religious faith would continue to inform the purview and parameters of scientific activity throughout the Enlightenment era, as it does to some degree to the present day. Yet Bacon knew that it was proper to give to faith that which is divine. Give to science that which belongs to the natural realm.
The misevaluation of human capacity is a significant component of Bacon's argument, and his connection of power to knowledge is the single most misunderstood and misquoted element of Bacon's philosophy. Knowledge and power are not one and the same for Bacon, but they are closely related. He stipulated that “nature to be commanded must be obeyed.” In short, in order to obey nature, that is, to discover the laws by which nature operates and thus produce works that will benefit mankind, “human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.”14 Knowledge and power are thus linked in the sense that human power is needed to increase the store of human knowledge, and not in the sense that scientific knowledge leads directly to some kind of power to dominate mankind, ideologically or politically, as much as many old twentieth-century postmodernist writers would have wished for you to believe. As Bacon emphasized,
Man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed.15
Indeed, Bacon makes clear that his purpose is not to replace one authoritative dogma for another, but rather to discover the laws of nature as they really are. What is needed to advance scientific knowledge is not for the scientist to be a glory seeker. Instead, “the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit” and a love of truth are the necessary character traits true philosophers of nature should hold.16 His plan for natural science relies neither on individual bursts of genius nor random chance. A set and sure method is the only thing that will allow true scientific progress to be made. Bacon emphasized the importance of this method being both public and collaborative, so that those following it will be able to detect errors committed by others. These errors can then be corrected, and the stock of knowledge increased.
This “interpretation of nature” was to be carried out by induction. He knew that this method, as he put it, is “extracted not merely out of the depths of the mind, but out of the very bowels of nature.”17 In other words, the method proceeds from facts unearthed to the formation of laws of nature. Bacon's induction is not “simple enumeration,” which he calls “childish.” Rather, it is a method for the “discovery and demonstration of sciences and arts,” which “must analyze nature by proper rejections and exclusions; and then, after a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirmative instances—which has not yet been done or even attempted.”18 Hence this method would lead to a gradual building of knowledge and, he hoped, prohibit those who would engage in scientific study from jumping immediately from particular instances to false assumptions.
The method is not foolproof, and Bacon was aware of it. One of its most significant drawbacks is that the senses are prone to deceive us. The senses can lie, they can give us no information where information exists, or they can give us false information altogether. And since our senses are generated internally, we are in a way preprogrammed to see either what we wish to see, or see what we expect to see. Our preconceived notions can harm a proper interpretation of nature and are the bases of what Bacon called the “idols of the mind”: the “false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein.”19 As deeply rooted prejudices, they are not possible to overcome completely. We can, however, be “forewarned of the danger” and “fortify [ourselves] as far as may be against their assaults.”20
Seventeenth-century natural scientists and political philosophers agreed. Chemist Robert Boyle argued that a proper scientific conception of nature should be precisely defined, so that all may agree on a common foundation on which progress can be built. Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes would later note that imprecisely defined concepts only harm the advancement of scientific knowledge. More than anyone else, Bacon inspired his scientific and philosophical descendants to develop a language of science amenable to the discovery of natural laws. The sciences began to diversify, taking on their own languages and terminology, including the study of physics. As the inventor of physics Isaac Newton demonstrated in The Principia later that same century, that language is mathematics.
When dealing with politics, however, “it is not the lie, that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt,” as Bacon so eloquently stated it.21 His following words are worth quoting in full. Why? Because they are not only true in terms of religious interference in scientific matters, but they are also true when it comes to the relationship between natural science and politics. And since in the United States various adherents of one religion or another all too often consider themselves to be self-appointed political mouthpieces when it comes to any scientific advancement they don't “like,” I offer another serving of Bacon:
What a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride;…things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and affect the understanding.22
Individual judgment rather than the slavish following of received opinion is the key to Bacon's philosophy. According to him, genuine consent does not flow from bowing to doctrine. Merely following the words of previous masters is a sign of inadequacy in the realm of knowledge, not confirmation of rectitude. Rather, “true consent is that which consists in the coincidence of free judgments, after due examination.”23 This trope of free consent is a crucial one. It would be adapted from the realm of scientific inquiry and enter political thought to become part and parcel of the basis of classical liberalism.
After Bacon's death, scientists applied his method to the study of the natural world, and philosophers adapted tenets of it in their explications of the human condition and political thought. By the end of the century, John Locke would apply many core Baconian tenets to the realm of political philosophy, and in so doing he influenced the form modern liberal political theory would take.
The Second Treatise of Government is John Locke's most politically influential work. His formulation of a government based on consent and the legitimacy of questioning authority, which includes the authority of any majority, reflects Bacon's own stance on natural science in The New Organon, in which Bacon cautions us that “true consent is that which consists in the coincidence of free judgments, after due examination.”24
In the first chapter of the treatise, Locke states that political power is “a Right of making laws…and this only for the Publick Good.”25 Locke's intellectual construct of the state of nature—the pre-political condition humans inhabited before deciding to live and work together for mutual benefit—is an important starting point. For “the State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.”26 The language he uses is vital: “a Law of Nature to govern it.” With this, Locke lays the foundation for connecting the laws of nature to a government based on consent, which itself must obey those laws. In The Second Treatise of Government, reason is the law of nature. And since all are capable of reason, or as he puts it, “we are born free as we are born rational,”27 Locke is able to posit both equality and natural freedom. “Within the bounds of the Law of Nature,” all may act as they see fit.28
This was an extraordinary and crucial move. And it was certainly not a theory of democracy. It was something entirely new. Locke's discussion of political power in The Second Treatise is deeply connected to his ideal of individual liberty. He did nothing less than adapt the language of natural science in general, and Newtonian physics in particular, to formulate his ideas of power, liberty, and necessity. The Second Treatise links these concepts to government. As he explained, “The Natural Liberty of Man is to be free from any Superior Power on Earth, and not to be under the Will or Legislative Authority of Man, but to have only the Law of Nature for his Rule.”29 The “Law of Nature” here is being used in the style of Isaac Newton's three laws of motion. In The Second Treatise, our natural state (our “natural liberty”) is to be free from the will of another. It is to be free from “Legislative Authority.” These ideas are wholly influenced by natural science. And as we shall see, these newly formed political ideas share an ethic that is parallel to that of natural science.
For Locke, our natural liberty in the state of nature is not lost when we form civil society: “The Liberty of Man, in Society, is to be under no other Legislative Power, but that established, by consent, in the Commonwealth, nor under the Dominion of any Will, or Restraint of any Law, but what the Legislative shall enact, according to the Trust put in it.”30 Locke's reliance on consent reflects Bacon's stance in The New Organon, where the latter argued that true consent—not arbitrary authority—should be the only real basis of scientific agreement.
Freedom in the state of nature is the power to act only within the law of nature, with reason as a constraint. In any society this freedom is curbed according to an agreed upon rule of law. Locke argues that the law is not meant to take away freedom, but enhance it to the benefit of society. Thus he is able to state that “the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom.”31 Again, the language he chose is of paramount importance. Liberty is defined as the power “to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where there is no Law: But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other Man's Humour might domineer over him?)”32
Thus liberty stems from an individual's power to do or to forbear. Only now has this individual power been writ large. First to the level of society, and now to the formation of government. Yet at the same time the right of the individual is never lost. Locke makes it crystal clear that we are each born with rights. They are inalienable. A democracy cannot, nor has it ever successfully tried to make such a claim. Democracy is “rule by the people.” A majority of 50 percent of the population plus one person constitute the ruling majority. The concepts of individual liberty and inalienable rights do not, nor could they ever, apply in such a political schema.
Locke argues that reason enables individuals to conclude that forming a government based on consent will preserve their lives. The preservation of their individual rights, themselves stemming from the laws of nature and natural liberty, plays a key role in Locke's political theory. In The Second Treatise, citizens elect representatives via democratic choice to rule their “Commonwealth,” a form of government characterized by a separation of powers (Executive, Legislative, and “Federative”) and described by Locke as “any independent community which the Latines signified by the word Civitas,” and in which the elected Legislative branch has the power to make laws by which it is itself bound.33 As Locke puts it:
The great end of Men entering into Society, being the enjoyment of their Properties in Peace and Safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the Laws establish'd in that Society; the first and fundamental positive Law of the all Commonwealths, is the establishing of the Legislative Power; as the first and fundamental natural Law, which is to govern even the Legislative itself, is the preservation of the Society and (as far as will consist with the publick good) of every person in it.34
Thus far, Locke, like Thomas Hobbes did before him, has transcended custom and traditional authority by denying the supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the political, by positing that humans are essentially equal, and by arguing that we are capable of reason. But while Hobbes's solution to the maintenance of his subjects’ liberty was the appointment of an absolute sovereign, Locke's remedy is his “Commonwealth,” a government characterized by representation, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. Both Hobbes and Locke relied on the categories, language, and ethic of modern natural science as first envisioned by Francis Bacon to demonstrate that humans are capable of reason, and that they possess the natural capacity of political self-determination via mutual consent.
As we can see clearly, Locke's individuals enter into civil society and form the commonwealth to protect their right to life, liberty, and property. The government is based on consent—that indispensable element of Bacon's natural science—and the only basis of “any lawful Government in the World,” according to Locke.35 As such, “against the laws there can be no authority.” Locke establishes the existence of laws of nature in such a way that no authority could legitimately contradict them, be that authority ecclesiastical, temporal, or military. Were this not the case, any powerful authority could violate the original purpose of the commonwealth, which includes the safety, security, and the protection of the people's inalienable rights. This brings us to the move Thomas Hobbes would never have dared to consider. If the “supreme executive power” of Locke's commonwealth were to “neglect and abandon” the charge of preserving the rights of the people, rights that are naturally ours, the government may be dissolved by the people themselves.36
Once dissolved, “the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new Legislative, differing from the other.”37 The process by which this is determined is as powerful as it is simple: “The people shall be Judge.”38 Of course, Locke is confident that a government such as he has constructed, one that is in the name of the people for their preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, should have very little need for rebellion. After all, the government is designed to be self-corrective from the very beginning. As he states, “every little mismanagement in publick affairs” is not enough to foment revolution; only “a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People.”39
Locke's innovation is not just the right of humans with equal capacity for reason to consent to establish a government for themselves; it is the perpetual right to question such authority in perpetuity. Just like the ethic and practice of modern natural science still demands. This political innovation was radical, and it formed the basis of the classical liberal tradition, a tradition that we live by and still hold dear. As Locke explains it,
Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond Right, which no Body can have a right to. And this is making use of the Power any one has in his hands; not for the good of those, who are under it, but for his own private separate Advantage. When the Governour, however intituled [sic], makes not the Law, but his Will, the Rule; and his Commands and Actions are not directed to the preservation of the Properties of his People, but the satisfaction of his own Ambition, Revenge, Covetousness, or any other irregular Passion.40
Succinctly put, wherever law ends, tyranny begins.
Grounded in reason and drawing on the language and ethic of natural science, Locke, following Francis Bacon, went beyond the latter's exhortation to question religious and intellectual authority, and declared that humans have the right to resist established political power. The progression of his argument is elegant. Since all are capable of reason, which is the primary “law of nature,” we possess certain inalienable rights, based on the laws of nature that no one can violate. Included in these rights is the power to establish government, to limit its sway, and to sanction the formation of laws to which the government must itself be subject. Since these rights are based in the laws of nature, which no authority can eradicate or refute, the people have a right to question any authority that breaks these laws. Hence the ethic of natural science became the foundation onto which the political procedures of republics were built. No democracy has ever had such an ethic.
It is very important to note that Locke was more concerned with establishing a stable, institutional means of preserving the natural liberty of individuals than he was in creating a “perfect” society. The difference between the two approaches is significant. While the latter approach involves an attempt to identify and remove the causes of dissent and injustice, the former endeavors to establish a form of government designed to be self-correcting and flexible in the face of dissent and injustice. This difference is what separated the Continental philosophical tradition stemming from René Descartes from the philosophical tradition inspired by Bacon and the scientific revolution. In other words, it formed the basis of classical liberalism, which has at its center the core ideas of individual freedom, inalienable rights, and the legitimacy of political resistance.
Locke wasn't interested in theorizing utopia. Instead, he was concerned with incorporating a new way of thinking about the natural world into his answer to that principal question of political philosophy: How ought we to live? For Francis Bacon at the outset of the seventeenth century, as in Locke's “Commonwealth,” and as it is in the activity of natural science today, flexibility in the face of new information is crucial.
The activity of science cannot be reduced to mere rote method, much less an ideology. It embodies an ethic of unceasing questioning not only of scientific authority, but also of intellectual, political, or religious authority. The activity of science is ongoing and continuous, not driven by a desire to find comprehensive Meaning, Absolute Truth, or The Answer to the vagaries of life. Searches such as these fall under the purview of religion and metaphysics. Rather, the activity of science involves the endeavor to seek answers to specific questions posed about the physical universe. The goals of science, as Bacon first explained, are to pursue knowledge of the natural world, and to use this knowledge to benefit and aid humankind.
The legacy of Bacon and Locke, like the legacy of natural science, did not end with the seventeenth century. The advancement of natural science went hand in hand with the expansion of the idea that people have a right to govern themselves, and that political resistance is a legitimate act. Both formed the basis of classical liberalism. The Lockean and scientific elements within the American Declaration of Independence constitute one extraordinary example of how these principles continued to shape the modern world after the seventeenth century. The beginning of the Declaration deserves to be reread. Why? Because it deserves to be read this time with an eye to the influence, the language, and the ethic that the inception of natural science gave it. The italics for emphasis are mine:
When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
These powerful words forged a unique nation with a unique objective. And these words were themselves forged in the ethic of modern natural science.
In the twentieth century, critics of natural science from both extreme ends of the political and ideological spectrum tragically overlooked the emancipatory and radical elements of natural science and its influence on political thought. Even some of the most influential of these critics, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Michel Foucault, and their philosophical descendants, the self-styled postmodernists, based their ideology not on natural science as it actually evolved since Francis Bacon, but rather on metaphysical assumptions and so-called a priori principles. The influence of such a misguided endeavor was not only to eclipse the vast importance of Bacon's work, but also to draw a false image of the activity of science simply to benefit its critics. The result of their misconceptions was that the very phenomenon they hoped to counter they in fact resurrected from centuries ago. Their numerous critiques of various so-called “hegemonies” of one mode of thought or another took on new forms in their mouths. Unlike Bacon's interpretation of nature, which sought to mitigate the dangers of the idols of the mind, these critics of natural science were satisfied to first proclaim and then transfer its supposed dogmatic authority to themselves. Claims that hovered around the ideas that natural science succeeded only in of the wake of European imperialism were strong. Whether the wake was military or cultural or economic or technological, it very quickly became impossible to refute postmodern doublespeak without leaving oneself open to accusations of promoting “imperialism” oneself, and hence summarily dismissed. Reason, evidence, and method all became epithets in such circles.
The scientific method is self-corrective. It demands that we use our senses and our capacity for reason. And it demands that we take the world on its own terms and not conform our perceptions to accord with our preconceived notions, no matter how cherished they may be. These elements form a powerful base on which sits seventeenth-century Enlightenment thought, the foundation of the modern era. This is the legacy of Francis Bacon.
Attacks on natural science that misunderstand this will lead not to an emancipation from political, religious or cultural dogmatism, but rather to a condition of apathy toward political resistance itself. Without the ethic of modern natural science, we will be left only with what Bacon argued against: competing belief systems, such as religious factionalism or political extremism that have historically led to violence; appeals to authority of one sort or another; or slavish adherence to the discourse of the moment. Let us use our own judgment in the realm of scientific inquiry as in the realm of civil action. Let us be our own masters. Let us not depend on various authorities to think for us. Let us think for ourselves.