EPISTEMOLOGY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION
Francis Bacon looked forward to an alteration in the form of production and to the effective control of nature by man, as a result of a change in the ways of thinking.
Karl Marx
I
In a famous and highly dramatic passage of his chief work, Plato demands that philosophers should be kings and, vice versa, that kings – or autocratic rulers – should be fully trained philosophers.1 Plato’s proposal that philosophers should be kings has pleased many philosophers, and some of them have taken it quite seriously. Personally I do not find it an attractive proposal. Quite apart from the fact that I am against any form of autocracy or dictatorship, including the dictatorship of the wisest and best, philosophers do not seem to me particularly well suited for the job. Take for example the case of Thomas Masaryk, the creator, first president and, one might say, the philosopher-king of the Czechoslovak Republic. Masaryk was not only a fully trained philosopher, but also a born statesman and a great and admirable man. And his creation, the Czechoslovak Republic, was an unparalleled political achievement. Yet the dissolution of the Old Austrian Empire was also partly Masaryk’s work. And this proved a disaster for Europe and the world. For the instability that followed this dissolution was largely responsible for the rise of Nazism and finally even for the downfall of Masaryk’s own Czechoslovak Republic. And it is significant that Masaryk’s doctrine that ‘Austria-Hungary, this antinational … state, must be dismembered’2 (to use his own words) was derived from a mistaken philosophical doctrine: from the philosophical principle of the National State.3 But this principle, the principle of political nationalism, is not only an unfortunate and even a mischievous conception, it is also one that is actually impossible to realize. This is because Nations – in the sense of those who advocate this principle – do not exist: they are theoretical constructs, and the theories in which they are constructed are wholly inadequate, and completely inapplicable to Europe. For the political theory of nationalism rests on the assumption that there are ethnic groups which at the same time are also linguistic groups, and which happen also to inhabit geographically unified and coherent regions with natural boundaries that are defensible from a military point of view – groups which are united by a common language, a common territory, a common history, a common culture, and a common fate. The boundaries of the regions inhabited by these groups should, according to the theory of the Nation State, form boundaries of the new national states.
It was this theory which underlay the Masaryk–Wilson principle of the ‘Self-determination of Nations’, and in its name the multilingual state of Austria was destroyed.
But no such regions exist – at least not in Europe nor, indeed, anywhere in the Old World.4 There are few geographical regions in which only one native language is spoken: almost every region has its linguistic or ‘racial’ minority. Even Masaryk’s own newly created national state contained, in spite of its small size, several linguistic minorities.5 And the principle of the National State played a decisive role in its destruction: it was this principle which allowed Hitler to appear in the role of a liberator, and which confused the West.
It is important to my present theme that the idea of nationalism is a philosophical idea. It sprang from the theory of sovereignty – the theory that power in the state must be undivided – and from the idea of a superhuman ruler who rules by the grace of God. Rousseau’s replacement of the king by the people only inverted the view: he made of the people a nation – a superhuman nation by the grace of God. Thus the theory of political nationalism originated in a philosophical inversion of the theory of absolute monarchy. The history of this development seems to me characteristic of the rise of many philosophical ideas, and it suggests to my mind the lesson that philosophical ideas should be treated with a certain reserve. It also may teach us that there are fundamental ideas, such as the idea of political liberty, of the protection of linguistic and religious minorities, and of democracy, which remain fundamental and true even when defended by untenable philosophical theories.
The fact that an admirable man and a great statesman like Masaryk was led by certain philosophical ideas to commit so grave a blunder – that he accepted a philosophical theory which was not only untenable but, under existing conditions, almost bound to destroy his work as a statesman – all this, I believe, amounts to a strong argument against Plato’s demand that philosophers should rule. But one could also adduce another and entirely different argument against Plato: one could also say that Plato’s demand is superfluous, because the philosophers are ruling anyway – not officially, it is true, but all the more so in actual fact. For I want to advance the thesis that the world is ruled by ideas: ideas both good and bad. It is, therefore, ruled by those who produce those ideas – that is, by the philosophers, though rarely by professional philosophers.
The thesis that it is the philosophers who actually are the rulers is, of course, not new. Heinrich Heine expressed it as follows in 1838:6
Mark this, ye proud men of action: Ye are nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought who, often in humblest seclusion, have appointed you to your favourite task. Maximilien Robespierre was merely the hand of Jean Jacques Rousseau …
And Friedrich von Hayek, in his great work of liberal political philosophy, The Constitution of Liberty, has emphasized the relevance of this idea for us today, and its importance in the liberal tradition.7
Countless examples illustrate the political power of philosophical ideas. Marxism is a philosophy: Marx himself proudly quoted a review which described his theory as expounded in Capital, quite correctly, as the last of the great post-Kantian philosophical systems.8 His seizure of power, thirty-four years after his death, in the person of Lenin, is an almost exact repetition of the seizure of power by Rousseau, sixteen years after his death, in the person of Robespierre.
Orthodox Marxism, of course, denies the thesis of the political power of ideas: it sees in ideas mainly the inevitable consequences of technical and industrial developments. What changes first, Marx teaches, is the technique of production. Depending on this, the class-structure of society will change, followed by the prevalent ideas. And finally, when the whole substructure has changed, the system of political power will also change.9 But this theory – which contradicts our thesis of the power of philosophical ideas – is refuted by history. Consider, for example, the history of Russia since 1917. What came there first was the seizure of power – that is, what according to Marx’s theory should have come last. Next came Lenin’s great idea: the idea that socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification.10 And last came electrification, industrialization, and the enforced change of the so-called economic ‘substructure’. This change was thus imposed from above, by a new instrument of power, the new class dictatorship.
Later I shall endeavour to show that the first industrial revolution – the English Industrial Revolution – was also inspired by philosophical ideas.
A totally different example of the seizure of political power by a philosophy – a seizure of power by purely democratic means – has been brought to my attention by Hayek. The English philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill, wrote in his Autobiography, published shortly after his death in 1873, that in the years around 1830 his circle (the so-called Philosophical Radicals) had adopted the following programme: they wanted to achieve an improvement in human society by ‘securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population’.11 Seventy-two years after his death John Stuart Mill seized political power in England. And no political party would dare today to challenge his programme.
II
The political power of philosophical ideas – and often enough of harmful or immature or downright silly philosophical ideas – is a fact that might well depress and even terrify us. And indeed, it would be quite true to say that almost all our wars are ideological wars: religious wars or ideological-religious persecutions.
But we must not be too pessimistic. Fortunately there are also good, humane, and wise philosophical ideas. And they, too, are powerful. There is, first of all, the idea of religious tolerance and of respecting opinions that differ from our own. And there are the philosophical ideas of justice and liberty. Countless men have sacrificed their lives for them. And if we mention ideological wars we must not forget such crusades of peace as the Nansen Aid of the International Red Cross in Geneva, which saved more than a million citizens of the Soviet Union from death by famine in the years 1921 and 1922. And we must not forget that the idea of Peace on Earth is a philosophical as well as a religious idea, and that it was a philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who first formulated the idea of a World Federation of a League of Nations.
The idea of peace is a good example of our thesis of the political power of ideas. Obsessed as we are by the memory of two world wars and by the threat of a third, we all are inclined to overlook something important – the fact that since 1918 all Europe has acknowledged the idea of peace as fundamental. Even Mussolini and Hitler, whose ideology was openly aggressive, were forced, by the prevailing public opinion, to pose as friends of peace, and to blame others for the wars which they began. The fact that they had to make this concession to public opinion shows how strong was the will to make peace. One must not underrate the moral victory won in 1918 by the idea of peace. It has not, it is true, brought us peace. Yet it has created the will to make peace – a will which is a moral prerequisite for it.
This victory of the idea of peace can be regarded as a belated victory of Erasmus of Rotterdam, almost four hundred years after his death. To see clearly how badly Christian Europe stood in need of the teachings of the Christian humanist Erasmus, we should remember the attack made upon Erasmus by that great musician, poet, and fighter against the devil, Martin Luther.
Luther fought Erasmus because he saw that the idea of peace was linked with the idea of tolerance: If I did not see these upheavals [Luther speaks of war and bloodshed] I should say that the word of God was not in the world. But now, when I do see them, my heart rejoices …’. ‘The wish to quieten these upheavals is nothing less than the wish to abandon the word of God and to suppress it’, Luther wrote. And to Erasmus’ appeal for peace and understanding he replied: ‘Stop lamenting, stop trying to cure [the ills of the world]! This war is the war of our Lord God. He started it, He sustains it, and it will never cease until all the enemies of his word have become dung under our feet.’12 We should remember here that Erasmus and his friends were not lacking in personal courage. Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, both friends of Erasmus and like himself champions of tolerance, died, not primarily as martyrs of Roman Catholicism, but rather, I believe, as martyrs of the idea of humanism, as opponents of barbarism, of arbitrary rule, and of violence. If today we look upon Christianity as a force for peace and tolerance, we testify to the spiritual victory of Erasmus.
III
All I have said so far was meant to suggest to you an attitude towards philosophy which might perhaps be formulated like this. Just as there are good and evil religions – religions that encourage the good or the evil in man – so there are good and evil philosophical ideas, and true and false philosophical theories. We must therefore neither revere nor revile religion as such, or philosophy as such. Rather, we must evaluate religious and philosophical ideas with critical and selective minds. The terrifying power of ideas burdens all of us with grave responsibilities. We must not accept or refuse them unthinkingly. We must judge them critically.
The attitude I have just formulated may appear to many as obvious. But it is not by any means generally accepted, or even generally understood. It is in origin, rather, a specifically European or Western attitude – the attitude of critical rationalism. It is the attitude of the critical and rational tradition of European philosophy.
Of course, critical thinkers have existed outside Europe. But nowhere else, to my knowledge, has there existed a critical or rationalist tradition. And from the critical or rationalist tradition in Europe there grew, eventually, European science.
But even before it gave rise to modern science, critical rationalism created European philosophy. Or more precisely, European philosophy is just as old as European critical rationalism. For both were founded by Thales and Anaximander of Miletus.
Naturally, uncritical and even anti-critical countercurrents – both rationalist and anti-rationalist – kept forming within European philosophy itself. And nowadays13 the anti-rationalist philosophy of ‘existentialism’ is enjoying a great vogue.
Existentialism maintains, quite correctly, that in matters of real importance nothing can be proved, and that therefore one is always faced with the necessity of making decisions – fundamental decisions. But hardly anybody, not even the most uncritical and naïve rationalist, would contest the assertion that nothing of importance can be proved, and that all that can be proved consists, at most, of mathematical and logical truisms.
It is, therefore, perfectly correct to state that we have to make free decisions all the time – a fact that, for instance, Immanuel Kant, the critical rationalist and the last great philosopher of the Enlightenment, saw very clearly. But of course this statement tells us nothing about what our fundamental decision will turn out to be: whether we will decide for or against rationalism, whether, that is, we will decide with Erasmus and Socrates in favour of listening to rational arguments – making our further decisions depend on critical and careful consideration of such arguments, and on self-critical reflection – or whether we leap headlong into the magic circle of an irrationalist existentialism, or rather, into the magic whirlpool of anti-rationalist ‘commitments’.14
However that may be, European philosophy made a fundamental decision, fundamental for itself and for Europe, when twenty-four centuries ago it decided in favour of critical rationalism and self-criticism. And indeed, without this self-critical tradition the current fashions of philosophical anti-rationalism could not possibly have arisen: it is just one of the traditions of critical rationalism that it never ceases to criticize itself.
IV
What I have said thus far bears heavily upon my main subject. Yet it is only an introduction. For the task of outlining the influence of European philosophy on the history of Europe in one short hour confronted me with some difficult and fairly fundamental decisions. I decided to limit myself to three closely connected problems. I want to discuss the little-known role which a highly immature philosophical theory has played in the rise of the three most distinctive and characteristic forces in European history. The three forces I have in mind are the following:
1 our industrial civilization;
2 our science, and its influence; and
3 our idea of individual freedom.
Thus industrialism, science, and the idea of freedom are my three chief subjects. It is fairly obvious that they are characteristically European subjects, provided we permit ourselves to treat American civilization as an offshoot of European civilization. How they link up with philosophy is perhaps less obvious.
It is my basic proposition that they are connected in an interesting way with a highly characteristic European theory of knowledge or epistemology: with that theory which Plato described in his famous simile of the cave in which he depicted the world of phenomena as a world of shadows – shadows cast by a real world hidden behind the world of phenomena. Admittedly Plato’s belief in a world we can never learn to know could perhaps be called ‘epistemological pessimism’. And it has spread far beyond Europe. But Plato supplemented it, quite in the spirit of the old Ionian critical and rationalist tradition, with an unequalled epistemological optimism. And this epistemological optimism has remained part of our Western civilization. It is the optimistic theory that science, that is, real knowledge about the hidden real world, though certainly very difficult, is nevertheless attainable, at least for some of us. Man, according to Plato, can discover the reality hidden behind the world of phenomena, and he can discover it by the power of his own critical reason, without the aid of divine revelation.
This is the almost unbelievable optimism of Greek rationalism:15 of the rationalism of the Renaissance – of European rationalism. Homer, though perhaps with a slight touch of irony, still appealed to the authority of the Muses. They are his sources, the divine fountainheads of his knowledge. Similarly the Jews and, in the Middle Ages, the Arabs and the Christians of Europe, appealed to the authority of divine revelation as the source of their knowledge. But the Ionian philosophers, beginning perhaps with Thales, argued. They appealed to critical argument and thus to reason: they thought of reason as capable of unveiling the secrets of a hidden reality. This is what I call ‘epistemological optimism’. I believe that this optimistic attitude existed almost exclusively in Europe: in the two or three centuries of Greek rationalism and in the three or four centuries of its European and American renaissance.
Corresponding to my three main subjects, industrialism, science, and freedom, I can now formulate my three chief theses. Summed up in one sentence they read:
Europe’s industrialism, its science, and its political idea of freedom, that is to say, every one of those characteristic and fundamental aspects of European civilization that I have listed, is a product of what I have called ‘epistemological optimism’.16
I shall now try to substantiate this thesis for each of my three chief subjects.
V
When we seek to understand the distinctive character of European or Western civilization, one feature leaps to the mind. European civilization is an industrial civilization. It is based upon industrialization on the grand scale. It uses engines, sources of energy which are non-muscular. In this, European and American civilization differ fundamentally from all the other great civilizations, which are or were mainly agrarian and whose industry depended on manual labour.
I think there is no other feature that distinguishes our civilization so clearly from all the others – except perhaps European science. Literature, art, religion, philosophy, and even the rudiments of natural science play their part in all other civilizations, for instance in those of India and China. But heavy industry on a grand scale seems to be unique as a form of production and indeed as a way of life. We find it only in Europe and in those parts of the world which have taken it over from Europe.
Like industrialism, the growth of science is a characteristic feature of Europe. And since they have developed almost simultaneously, the question arises whether industry is a product of the development of science or whether (as Marxism would have it) science is a product of industrialization.
I believe that neither of these interpretations is true, and that both science and industry are products of that philosophy which I have called ‘epistemological optimism’.
It is a fact that ever since the Renaissance the development of industry and the development of science have been closely linked and have closely interacted. Each is indebted to the other. But if we ask how this interaction came about, my answer is this. It was bound to take place right from the outset, for it stemmed from a new philosophical or religious idea – a peculiar new variant of the Platonic idea that the philosophers, that is, those who know, should also be those who wield the power. The peculiar new variant of that theory is expressed in the dictum that knowledge is power – power over nature. It is my thesis that both the industrial and the scientific development that took place since the Renaissance are realizations of this philosophical idea – the idea of the mastery of man over nature.
The idea of mastery over nature is, I suggest, the Renaissance version of epistemological optimism. We find it in the Neo-Platonist Leonardo, and we find it in a somewhat claptrap form in Bacon. Bacon was not, I believe, a great philosopher. But he was a visionary, and he is most important as the prophet of a new industrial and scientific society. He founded a new secularized religion and so became the creator of the industrial and scientific revolution.17
VI
Before going into details I would like to explain briefly my own opinion about this particular version of epistemological optimism.18
I am myself a rationalist, and an epistemological optimist. Yet I am no friend of that mighty rationalist religion of which Bacon is the founder. My objection to this religion is purely philosophical. And I should like to emphasize that it has nothing whatever to do with the present hangover – the intellectual anti-climax of the nuclear bomb19 (or with other undesirable unintended consequences of the growth of scientific knowledge and technology). My objection to the religion of mastery over nature, to the idea that knowledge is power, is, quite simply, that knowledge is something far better than power. Bacon’s formula ‘knowledge is power’ (‘nam et ipsa scientia potestas est’) was an attempt to advertise knowledge. It takes it for granted that power is always something good, and it promises that you will be repaid in terms of power if you make the unpleasant effort needed to attain knowledge. Yet I believe that Lord Acton was right when he said: ‘Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’20 Of course, I do not deny that power can be tamed, that it may sometimes be used for very good things – for instance, in the hands of a good physician. But I am afraid that even physicians not infrequently succumb to the temptation to make their patients feel their power.
Kant once commented strikingly on the saying that truthfulness, and honesty, is the best policy. This, he said, was open to doubt. But he added that he did not doubt that truthfulness was better than any policy.21 My remark that knowledge is better than all power is merely a variant of this remark of Kant’s. To the scientist only truth matters, not power. It is the politician who cares about power.
The idea of mastery over nature is in itself perhaps neutral. When it is a case of helping our fellow men, when it is a case of medical progress or of the fight against starvation and misery, then of course I welcome the power we owe to our knowledge about nature. But the idea of mastery over nature often contains, I fear, another element – the will to power as such, the will to dominate. And to the idea of domination I cannot take kindly. It is blasphemy, sacrilege, hubris. Men are not gods and they ought to know it. We shall never dominate nature. The mountaineer is to be pitied who sees in mountains nothing but adversaries he has to conquer – who does not know the feeling of gratitude, and the feeling of his own insignificance in the face of nature. Power always is temptation, even power or mastery over nature. What the Sherpa Tenzing felt on the peak of Chomo Lungma – that is, Mount Everest – was better: ‘I am grateful, Chomo Lungma’, he said.22
But let us return to Bacon. From a rational or critical point of view Bacon was not a great philosopher of science. His writings are sketchy and pretentious, contradictory, shallow, and immature. And his famous and influential theory of induction, so far as he developed it (for most of it remained a mere project, and has remained so ever since), bears no relation to the real procedure of science. (It was the great chemist Justus Liebig who pointed this out most forcefully.23) Bacon never understood the theoretical approach of Copernicus, or of Gilbert, or of his contemporaries Galileo and Kepler.24 Nor did he understand the significance of mathematical ideas for science. Yet hardly any philosopher of modern times can compete with Bacon’s influence. Even today many scientists still regard him as their spiritual father.
VII
This leads us to a question which I call the historical problem of Bacon: how can we explain the immense influence of this logically and rationally quite unimportant philosopher?
I have already briefly hinted at my solution of this problem. In spite of everything I have said, Bacon is the spiritual father of modern science. Not because of his philosophy of science and his theory of induction, but because he became the founder and prophet of a rationalist church – a kind of anti-church. This church was founded not on a rock but on the vision and the promise of a scientific and industrial society – a society based on man’s mastery over nature. Bacon’s promise is the promise of self-liberation of mankind through knowledge.25
In his Utopia, The New Atlantis, Bacon depicted such a society. The governing body of that society was a technocratic institute of research which he called ‘Salomon’s House’. It is interesting to note that Bacon’s New Atlantis not only anticipated certain not too pleasant aspects of modern ‘Big Science’, but goes beyond them in its uninhibited dreams of the power, glory, and wealth that the great scientist may attain. Consider Bacon’s description of the more than papal pomp of one of the ‘Fathers of Salomon’s House’ – that is to say, one of the Directors of Research:26
The day being come, he made his entry. He was a man of middle stature and age, comely of person, and had an aspect as if he pitied men. He was clothed in a robe of fine black cloth, with wide sleeves and a cape…. He had gloves that were … set with stone; and shoes of peach-coloured velvet…. He was carried in a rich chariot without wheels, litter-wise; with two horses at either end, richly trapped in blue velvet embroidered; and two footmen on each side in the like attire. The chariot was all of cedar, gilt, and adorned with crystal; save that the fore-end had pannels of sapphires, set in borders of gold, and the hinder-end the like of emeralds of the Peru colour. There was also a sun of gold, radiant, upon the top, in the midst; and on the top before, a small cherub of gold, with wings displayed. The chariot was covered with cloth of gold tissued upon blue. He had before him fifty attendants, young men all, in white sattin loose coats to the mid-leg; and stockings of white silk; and shoes of blue velvet; and hats of blue velvet; with fine plumes of divers colours, set round like hat-bands. Next before the chariot went two men, bare-headed, in linen garments down to the foot, girt, and shoes of blue velvet; who carried the one a crosier, the other a pastoral staff like a sheep-hook; neither of them of metal, but the crosier of balm-wood, the pastoral staff of cedar. Horsemen he had none, neither before nor behind his chariot: as it seemeth, to avoid all tumult and trouble. Behind his chariot went all the officers and principals of the Companies of the City. He sat alone, upon cushions of a kind of excellent plush, blue: and under his foot curious carpets of silk of divers colours, like the Persian, but far finer. He held up his bare hand as he went, as blessing the people, but in silence.
But a less questionable passage from Bacon’s Novum Organum may here be of interest:27
Also our hopes are raised by the fact that some of the experiments made hitherto are of such a kind that nobody before had an idea of such things; rather, they would have been contemptuously set aside as impossibilities.
If prior to the discovery of firearms somebody would have described their effects, and would have said that an invention had been made by the means of which even the biggest walls and fortifications could be shaken and knocked down from a great distance, people might have, quite reasonably, deliberated about the various ways of utilizing the power of the existing machines and contraptions, and how one might strengthen them with more weights and more wheels, or increase the number of knocks and blows; but nobody would have dreamt of a fiery blast which suddenly and violently expands and blows up; one would, on the contrary, have discarded such a thing entirely, because nobody had ever seen an example of it.
Bacon then goes on to discuss in a similar vein the discovery of silk and of the mariner’s compass – and he continues:
Thus there is much hope that Nature still holds many an excellent and useful thing in her lap that has no resemblance or parallel to what has been discovered hitherto, but, on the contrary, lies far away from all the paths of imagination, and from all that has been found so far. No doubt it will come to light in the circuitous course of the centuries, just as has happened with earlier inventions; but with the aid of the method which is here treated of these things will be found far more surely and more quickly; and indeed, they might be accounted for and anticipated at once.
This passage from the Novum Organum is characteristic of Bacon’s promise: Follow my new way, my new method, and you shall quickly attain knowledge and power. Indeed, Bacon believed that an Encyclopedia containing a description of all important phenomena of the Universe could be completed soon: he believed that, given two or three years, he could read through the whole book of Nature and bring the task of the new science to its completion.
There is no need to say that Bacon was mistaken – not only about the magnitude of the task, but about his new method. The method he was proposing had nothing whatever to do with that of the new science of Gilbert, of Galileo, or of Kepler, or with the later discoveries of Boyle and of Newton.
Yet Bacon’s promise of a scientific future, splendid and close at hand, had an immense influence on both English science and the English industrial revolution – the industrial revolution which spread first to Europe and later to America and, indeed, all over the world, and which has truly changed the world into a Baconian Utopia.
As is well known, the Royal Society and later the British Association for the Advancement of Science (and still later the American Association) were deliberate attempts to give effect to the Baconian idea of cooperative and organized research. And it may be of interest here to quote a passage from the second charter of the Royal Society, of 1663, which is still in force. It says that the researches of the Members are to promote ‘by the authority of experiments the sciences of natural things and of useful arts [that is, industrial technology], to the glory of God the Creator, and the advantage of the human race’.28 The conclusion of this passage is taken almost literally from Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning.29
Thus this pragmatic-technological attitude was combined from the outset with humanitarian aims: the increase of general welfare and the fight against want and poverty. The English and European industrial revolution was a philosophical and religious revolution, with Bacon as its prophet. It was inspired by the idea of accelerating, through knowledge and research, the hitherto far too slow advance of technology. It was the idea of a material self-liberation through knowledge.
VIII
But here one could raise an important objection. Was not the idea of applied knowledge, the idea that knowledge is power, already an influence in the Middle Ages? Was there not astrology that served the desire for power, and alchemy, the search for the Philosopher’s Stone?
The objection is important and can help us to bring out more clearly the influence of epistemological optimism. For that peculiar optimism was lacking in the medieval alchemists and astrologers. They searched for a secret which, they believed, had once been known in antiquity but had later been forgotten. They looked for the key to wisdom in old parchments.
And yet, they may have been right in hunting for lost treasures of wisdom. What they were seeking so eagerly may well have been, unknown to themselves, the greatness of ancient Rome and the Augustan Peace, or perhaps the greatness and the boldness of the critical and rationalist philosophy of the pre-Socratic philosophers.
However this may be, Bacon (and the Renaissance) felt differently on this point. Admittedly Bacon was an alchemist and a ‘magus’ who believed in ‘natural magic’. But he also believed – and this is decisive – that he himself had found a key to new wisdom. It is this new self-confidence that distinguishes Bacon’s optimism – the confidence, completely unwarranted in his case, that he himself had the power to unveil the mysteries of nature without having to be initiated into the secret wisdom of the ancients. This power is independent of divine revelation, and independent of the disclosure of mysteries in the secret writings of ancient sages. Thus, Bacon’s promise may be said to encourage enterprise and self-confidence. It encourages men to rely on themselves in the search for knowledge, and so to become independent of divine revelation and of ancient traditions.
IX
Bacon himself (and with him many other Renaissance sages) belonged to two worlds: he belonged to the old world of mysticism and word magic combined with the authoritarian faith in some lost secret, the (Neo-Platonic30) Wisdom of the Ancients.31 At the same time he belonged to the new world of an anti-authoritarian confidence in our own power of adding to our wisdom and thereby of further increasing our power. This made Bacon’s prophetic message apt to grow into a new religion, and ultimately into the new message of the Enlightenment. This new message of the European Enlightenment might perhaps be summed up in the somewhat equivocal formula: God helps those who help themselves – a formula which has sometimes been taken quite seriously as a statement of the responsibility imposed by God on us, and sometimes as a manifesto of the self-emancipation and the self-reliance of a secular, fatherless society.32
Christianity, perhaps more than any other religion, had always taught its believers to look forward to a life to come, to sacrifice the present for the sake of the future. Thus it laid the foundation of an attitude towards life that might be called the European ‘futurity neurosis’. It is a way of living at all times more in the future than in the present, of being obsessed with plans for the future, schemes for the future, investments in a better life to come. My conjecture is that epistemological optimism with its peculiar idea of self-reliance – that God helps those who help themselves – secularized Christianity, and turned its futurity neurosis into the idea of self-liberation through the acquisition of new knowledge and through participation in the new knowledge to come – the new growth of knowledge – and at the same time into the related but subtly different idea of self-liberation through the acquisition of new power, and of new wealth.
Thus we may say that the Baconian Utopia, like most Utopias, was an attempt to bring heaven down to earth. And so far as it promised an increase of power and of wealth through self-help and self-liberation through new knowledge, it is perhaps the one Utopia that has (so far) kept its promise. Indeed it has kept it to an almost unbelievable extent.33
X
I may perhaps now remind you of my programme, which was to outline the decisive part played by philosophical ideas, and more precisely by epistemological optimism, in the development of three characteristic forces of European history:
1 our industrial civilization;
2 our science, and its influence; and
3 our idea of individual freedom.
I will now leave the first of those three points – not because I have exhausted it (it is a subject I could not exhaust in one lecture), but simply because I have to pass on to my second point, the evolution of modern science.
As I have pointed out before, the evolution of science and of industry and technology have interacted, and have enriched each other. I now only want to stress that this interaction shows a significant asymmetry. While modern industrial development has become unthinkable without modern science, the opposite is not the case: science is largely autonomous. No doubt the needs of industry have been a stimulus to its development, and any stimulus is welcome and useful. But what the scientist wants more than anything else is to know. And though he is grateful to anyone who gives him interesting problems to tackle, and the means to tackle them, what he wants is knowledge, and to add to our knowledge.
XI
The science of the Renaissance may be regarded as the direct continuation of the Greek cosmology of the Ionians and the Pythagoreans, the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the Atomists and the Geometers. The method of Galileo and of Kepler is the critical, the rational, the hypothetical method of these forerunners of theirs.34 Hypotheses are invented and criticized. Under the influence of criticism they are modified. When the modifications become unsatisfactory, they are discarded, and new hypotheses are advanced. One typical example is the Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology with its modifications and auxiliary hypotheses, the epicycles. When they became too cumbrous, Copernicus rediscovered the heliocentric cosmology of Aristarchus. The heliocentric hypothesis, too, led to grave difficulties. But they were triumphantly resolved by Kepler and Newton. Thus the method of science consists of boldly advancing tentative hypotheses and of submitting them to critical tests. Since Einstein we know that it can never lead to certainty. For whether Newton or Einstein is right, we have learned from Einstein at least one thing: that Newton’s theory, too, is only a hypothesis, a conjecture, and perhaps a false one, in spite of its incredible success in predicting with the greatest precision almost all astronomical phenomena within our solar system, and even beyond.
Thus we have learned from Einstein that science offers us only hypotheses or conjectures rather than certain knowledge. But the modest programme of searching for hypotheses would probably not have inspired scientists: it might have never started the enterprise of science. What people hoped for, and sought, was knowledge – certain indubitable knowledge. Yet while searching for certain knowledge, scientists stumbled, as it were, upon the hypothetical, the conjectural, the critical method. For knowledge, whether certain or not, had to stand up to criticism. If it failed to do so, it had to be discarded. And so it came about that scientists got used to trying out new conjectures, and to using their imagination to the utmost while submitting themselves to the discipline of rational criticism.
Although nowadays we have given up the idea of absolutely certain knowledge, we have not by any means given up the idea of the search for truth. On the contrary, when we say that our knowledge is not certain, we only mean that we can never be sure whether our conjectures are true. When we find that a hypothesis is not true, or at least that it does not appear to be a better approximation to the truth than its competitors, then we may discard it. Hypotheses are never verifiable, but they can be falsified. They can be criticized, and tested.
It is the search for true theories that inspires this critical method. Without the regulative idea of truth, criticism would be pointless.
The experimental methods of Gilbert, Galileo, Torricelli, and Boyle are methods for testing theories: if a theory fails to satisfy an experiment, it is falsified and has to be modified or supplanted by another one – by a theory, that is, which lends itself better, or at least equally well, to testing.
So much for the method of science. It is critical, argumentative, and almost sceptical.
XII
But the great masters of this method were not aware of the fact that this was their method. They believed in the possibility of reaching absolute certainty in knowledge. A radical version of epistemological optimism inspired them (as it inspired Bacon). It led them from success to success. Nevertheless it was uncritical, and logically untenable.
We can describe this radical and uncritical epistemological optimism of the Renaissance as the belief that truth is manifest. Truth may be hard to find. But once the truth stands revealed before us, it is impossible for us not to recognize it as truth. We cannot possibly mistake it. Thus nature is an open book. Or, as Descartes put it, God does not deceive us.
This theory is closely related to Plato’s theory of anamnesis – to the theory that before our birth we knew the hidden reality, and that we recognize it again once we happen to catch sight of it, or perhaps even its faint shadow.
The idea that truth is manifest is a philosophical idea (or perhaps even a religious idea) of the greatest historical importance. It is an optimistic idea, a beautiful and hopeful dream, a truly sublime idea. And I willingly admit that there may be a grain of truth in it. But certainly not more than a grain. For the idea is mistaken. Again and again, even with quite simple things, we hold the truth in our hands and do not recognize it. And still more often we are convinced of having recognized the manifest truth while in fact we are entangled in errors.
The radical epistemological optimists – Plato, Bacon, Descartes, and others – were of course aware of the fact that we sometimes mistake error for truth. And in order to save the doctrine of manifest truth they were forced to explain the occurrence of error.
Plato’s theory of error was that our birth is a kind of epistemological fall from grace: when we are born we forget the best part of our knowledge, which is our direct acquaintance with truth. Similarly, Bacon (and Descartes) declared that error is to be explained by our personal shortcomings. We err because we stubbornly cling to our prejudices instead of opening our physical or mental eyes to the manifest truth. We are epistemological sinners: hardhearted sinners who refuse to perceive the truth even when it is manifest before our eyes. Bacon’s method, therefore, consists in cleansing our minds of prejudices. It is the unbiased mind, the pure mind, the mind cleansed of prejudice, that cannot fail to recognize the truth.
With this theory I have reached a final formulation of radical epistemological optimism. The theory is of great importance. It became the cornerstone of modern science. It made the scientist a priest of truth, and the worship of truth a sort of divine service.
I believe that this respect for truth is indeed one of the most important and most precious traits of European civilization, and that it is rooted nowhere more firmly and deeply than in science. It is a priceless treasure we find in the treasure-house of science, a treasure which, I believe, far surpasses her technological utility.
Yet Bacon’s theory of error is, in spite of its desirable consequences, untenable. Small wonder, therefore, that it has also led to undesirable consequences. I shall discuss some of these consequences in connection with my third and last point, to which I am now coming – my analysis of the importance of epistemological optimism for the development of freedom, of European liberalism.
In discussing my second point I have tried to show in what way epistemological optimism is responsible for the development of modern science. At the same time I have tried to discuss epistemological optimism and to evaluate and criticize this peculiar philosophy.
All this we have to keep in mind when we now turn to glance at the development of modern liberalism. And since I am going to say something critical about it, I want first of all to state quite clearly and unmistakably that my sympathies are all for it. Indeed, while I am well aware of its many imperfections, I do think – with E.M. Forster and Pablo Casals – that democracy is the best and noblest form of social life that has so far arisen in the history of mankind. I am not a prophet, and I cannot deny the possibility that one day it will be destroyed. But whether or not it will in fact survive, we should work for its survival.
Now I think that the mainspring that keeps democratic societies going is the peculiar philosophy that I have just sketched: the belief in the sanctity of truth, together with the over-optimistic belief that truth is manifest, even though it can be temporarily obscured by prejudices.
This peculiar philosophy is, of course, much older than Bacon. It played a large part in almost all religious wars – each side regarding the other as benighted, as refusing to see the obvious truth, and perhaps even as possessed by the devil.
XIV
Epistemological over-optimism has two very different philosophies opposed to it: a pessimism which despairs of the possibility of knowledge, and a critical optimism which realizes that it is human to err and that fanaticism is usually the attempt to shout down the voices of one’s own doubts. Up to the twentieth century critical optimists were rare. Socrates, Erasmus, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill were among the greatest of them.
The development of liberalism from the Reformation to our own time took place almost entirely under the sway of an uncritical, epistemological over-optimism: the theory of manifest truth. This theory led liberalism along two roads. The first led straight from the Reformation to the demand for freedom of religious worship. The second led through some disappointments in the theory of manifest truth to the theory that there exists a conspiracy against truth. For, it was argued, if so many do not see the manifest truth – that truth which is so clearly visible – it must be on account of false prejudices cunningly and systematically implanted into young impressionable minds so as to blind them to truth. The conspirators against truth were, of course, the priests of the competing churches: in the minds of the Protestants the Catholic Church, and vice versa.
Though based upon the mistaken doctrine of manifest truth, this second road led, nevertheless, to the valid and invaluable demand for freedom of thought, and to the demand for a universal and secular primary education – on the ground that those who are freed from the darkness of illiteracy and religious tutelage cannot fail to see the manifest truth.
And it led finally to the demand for universal suffrage. For if truth is manifest, then people cannot err. And since they can recognize the truth, they can also recognize what is good and just.
I believe that this development was good and just – despite the epistemological over-optimism, which is the main weakness of its theoretical basis. But it was the weakness of this theoretical basis that led to the terrible religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to the horrors of violent revolutions and civil wars. Here in the West, all this has finally led us to the Socratic insight that to err is human. We are not fanatics any longer. Most of us are only too willing to recognize our own shortcomings and mistakes. This insight, belatedly as it came to us, is a blessing. Like all blessings, though, it is a mixed blessing, for it tends to undermine our confidence in our way of life, especially those of us who have learned this lesson well.
I have come to the end of my historical sketch, and in conclusion I wish to add only one further remark: the Socratic-Erasmic insight that we may be in error should certainly prevent us from waging a war of aggression. But our consciousness of our shortcomings and mistakes must not deter us from fighting in defence of freedom.
NOTES
1 Plato, Republic, 473 c–e. In my Open Society, chapter 8, pp. 151f., I translated the passage as follows:
Unless, in their cities, philosophers are vested with the might of kings, or those now called kings and oligarchs become genuine and fully qualified philosophers; and unless these two, political might and philosophy, are fused (while the many who nowadays follow their natural inclination for one of these two are suppressed by force), unless this happens, my dear Glaucon, there can be no rest; and the evil will not cease to be rampant in the cities – nor, I believe, in the race of men.
2 See T. Masaryk, The New Europe (The Slav Standpoint), printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1918, for private circulation, p. 68.
3 It might, perhaps, be mentioned that Masaryk’s nationalism was moderate and humane: ‘I have never been a Chauvinist; I have not even been a nationalist …’ (Masaryk, p. 45). Nevertheless, he also said: ‘… we advocate the principle of nationality …’ (Masaryk, p. 52) and demanded the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary into national states. (See also note 53 to chapter 12 of my Open Society.) For a most interesting though different appraisal of Masaryk’s views, see A. van den Beld, Humanity: The Political and Social Philosophy of Thomas G. Masaryk, Mouton, The Hague, 1975.
4 Iceland may be an exception. Cp. my Conjectures and Refutations, p. 368.
5 A.J.P. Taylor claims that ‘Czechoslovakia contained seven [nationalities]’ – that is, ‘Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Magyars, Little Russians, Poles, Jews’. See The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1948, Peregrine Books edition, 1964, p. 274.
6 Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, 1833–4, book III (see p. 150 of Wolfgang Harich’s edition, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1966). The passage was quoted in my Open Society, volume II, p. 109.
7 Hayek has long stressed this point, which he says, has ‘long formed a fundamental part of the liberal creed’. See his Constitution of Liberty, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1960, pp. 112f., the quotation in his text from J.S. Mill, and in his footnote 14 on p. 445 from Lord Keynes.
8 Marx does so in the ‘Author’s Preface to the Second German Edition’ of Capital, dated London, 24 January 1873; see p. 871 of the Everyman edition of Capital, volume I; p. 27 of the Lawrence & Wishart edition, volume I.
9 This brief account is based on the analysis of Marx’s theory that I give in my Open Society, chapters 13–21. See especially chapter 15, pp. 108f., footnote 13 on p. 326, and the references given there to Marx’s ‘Preface’ to his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and his The Poverty of Philosophy.
10 Cp. my Open Society, volume II, pp. 83 and 108.
11 See John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, chapter 4, first edition, 1873, p. 105, Houghton Mifflin/Oxford University Press edition, edited by J. Stillinger, 1969, 1971, p. 64. It seems that Mill believed at the time that the only means of realizing his programme was by the voluntary adoption of birth control by the ‘labouring classes’. (The quotation in the text continues: ‘through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers’.) There is no reason to think that he gave up his support for birth control. But in his Autobiography, chapter 7 (1st edition, p. 231; Stillinger edition, p. 138) he indicates (possibly under the influence of his wife: note the sudden ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ on the page referred to) that a necessary additional means was a changed attitude towards private property and the adoption of a form of socialism.
12 The quotations are from Martin Luther’s De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will), 1525, a book written in reply to Erasmus’ De libero arbitrio (A Diatribe or Discourse Concerning Free Choice), 1524. The translations are my own. See De servo arbitrio in D. Martin Luther’s Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe), 18. Band, Hermann Böhlans Nachfolger, Weimar, 1908, p. 626. Cp. Luther’s Works, volume 33, Career of the Reformer III, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1972, pp. 52–3; or Martin Luther, Ausgewählte Werke, edited by H.H. Borcherdt and G. Merz, Ergänzungsreihe, erster Band, 1954, p. 35.
13 This passage was written in 1959.
14 Decisions (‘making up our minds’) are unavoidable, even in science. What scientists do all the time is to decide in the light of argument. But we should distinguish between critical and tentative decisions and dogmatic decisions or commitments. It is the latter type of decision which has given rise to ‘decisionism’.
15 It will be clear from the context that I am using the term ‘rationalism’ in its wide sense, and not in the narrow sense in which it is used in opposition to ‘empiricism’.
16 For a discussion of epistemological optimism, see ‘On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance’ in my Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 5ff.
17 Only quite recently, and many years after I first arrived at my not too favourable opinion of Bacon’s philosophy as well as at the view that he was the prophet of the industrial revolution, I came across the admirable and highly original book by Benjamin Farrington, Francis Bacon, Philosopher of Industrial Science, (Schuman, New York, 1949; Collier, New York, 1961; Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1951). Though Farrington treats Bacon from a philosophical point of view very different from my own, our results concerning Bacon’s influence on the industrial revolution are strikingly similar. Indeed, Farrington quotes (on p. 136 of the 1961 American edition) the passage from Marx’s Capital which I have now adopted as a motto for this chapter. In that passage Marx says: ‘… Francis Bacon looked forward to an alteration in the form of production and to the effective control of nature by man, as a result of a change in the ways of thinking’ (my italics). I certainly agree with what Marx says here, though my interpretation hardly fits Marx’s own view of the relation between ‘the mode of production of material life’ and ‘the general character of the social, political and intellectual processes of life’. For Marx says in his ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (cp. Lawrence & Wishart edition, 1971, pp. 20–1; Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, edited by T.B. Bottomore and M. Rubel, Penguin edition, 1963, p. 67), ‘The mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but, on the contrary their social existence determines their consciousness.’ This can hardly be squared with interpreting Bacon as one of those who helped to bring about the industrial revolution ‘as a result of a change in the ways of thinking’.
18 Cp. my ‘Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities’, chapter 4 of the present volume.
19 In the original lecture I mentioned at this point that my critical attitude towards Bacon predated the creation of nuclear weapons (I criticized Bacon in 1934), and that I remained a great admirer of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr even though their theories fathered the atom bomb.
20 John Emerich, Letter to Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887. Cp. John Emerich, Essays on Freedom and Power, edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb, Meridian Books, Thames & Hudson, London, 1956, p. 335.
21 I referred to this in my Open Society, volume I, p. 139. See Immanuel Kant, On Eternal Peace, Appendix, in Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, VIII, Gruyter, Berlin and Leipzig, 1923, p. 370. Cp. Kant’s Political Writings, edited by H. Reiss, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971, p. 116: ‘It is true, alas, that the saying “Honesty is the best policy” embodies a theory which is frequently contradicted by practice. Yet the equally theoretical proposition “Honesty is better than any policy” infinitely transcends all objections, and is indeed an indispensable condition of any policy whatever.’
22 Tenzing Norgay, Man of Everest (as told to James Ramsey Ullman), George Harrap & Co. Ltd, London, 1955, p. 271.
23 See Justus von Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung, Munich, 1863; English translation, ‘Lord Bacon as Natural Philosopher’, I and II, Macmillan’s Magazine, 8, 1863, pp. 237–49, 257–67.
24 Kepler is not mentioned at all by Bacon. See Ellis’ ‘Preface’ to the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis, in The Works of Francis Bacon, edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, Longman & Co., London, 1862–75, volume III, pp. 723–6; on Copernicus, see III, p. 229 and V, p. 517 (also IV, p. 373); on Galileo, see II, p. 596 (Bacon on Galileo’s theory of the tides) and, for example, V, pp. 541–2; on Gilbert, see III, pp. 292–3 and V, p. 202 (also V, pp. 454, 493, 515 and 537).
25 Cp. my ‘Emancipation Through Knowledge’ in my In Search of a Better World.
26 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in The Works of Francis Bacon, volume III, pp. 114f.
27 The quotations are from Novum Organum, 109th Aphorism. Cp. The Works of Francis Bacon, volume I, pp. 207f. The translation is my own. Cp. James Spedding’s translation in The Works of Francis Bacon, volume IV, pp. 99f.
28 Cp., for example, Sir Henry Lyons, The Royal Society 1660–1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1944, Appendix I: ‘Second Charter: 22 April 1663’. The quotation in my text is from p. 329 of this Appendix.
29 See The Works of Francis Bacon, volume III, p. 294: ‘…for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate’. Cp. also Rawley’s introduction ‘To the Reader’ to New Atlantis (published in 1627): ‘… a college instituted for the interpreting of nature and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men …’ (The Works of Francis Bacon, volume III, p. 127.)
30 I should perhaps have said, rather, Hermeticism. See, notably, P. Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968 (first published in Italian in 1957); Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1964; Francis Yates, ‘The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science’, in Art, Science and History in the Renaissance, edited by C.S. Singleton, Baltimore, 1967. For a recent discussion see D.K. Probst, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of the Hermetic Tradition into the Rationalist Church, D.Sc. thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Faculté des Sciences, Service de Chimie Physique II, 1972.
31 Cp. De Sapientia Veterum, in The Works of Francis Bacon, volume VI, pp. 619–86 (translation, pp. 689–764) and De Principiis Atque Originibus Secundum Fabulas Cupidinis et Coele in The Works of Francis Bacon, volume III, pp. 79–118 (translation, volume V, pp. 461–500), which interpreted a number of classical myths as cosmological allegories.
32 This term is a reference to the idea that our western societies do not, by their structure, satisfy a need for a father-figure. I discussed these problems, briefly, in my (unpublished) William James Lectures delivered in Harvard in 1950. (Cp. my Conjectures and Refutations, p. 375.)
33 I offer this view as an alternative historical conjecture to the theories of Max Weber and R.H. Tawney about the relation between ‘Religion’ and ‘the Rise of Capitalism’ (see Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1930; and R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Holland Memorial Lectures, 1922, first published 1926). The time at my disposal did not allow me to elaborate my conjecture – and even less to compare it critically with its competitors.
34 Lest I be misunderstood, my comments pertain not so much to scientists as individuals as to the scientific tradition – the friendly-hostile cooperation of scientists – which itself emerged from the very developments we are discussing. Cp. my Objective Knowledge, chapter 4, section 9.
A lecture delivered in German on 13 June 1959, at the School of Economics, the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, in a series of lectures entitled ‘Europe: Inheritance and Future Tasks’, on the topic ‘The Influence of Philosophy upon some Fundamental Turning Points in the History of Europe’. First published, with revisions, in Ordo, 30, (Festschrift for F.A. von Hayek), Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart and New York, 1979. Jeremy Shearmur has provided the references in the notes. The motto is taken from Karl Marx, Capital, volume I, chapter 13, section 2 (the footnote on pp. 413ff of the Everyman’s Library edition, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, E.P. Dutton&; Co. Inc., New York, 1930 and subsequent impressions. Cp. Lawrence & Wishart, London/Progress Publishers, Moscow edition, 1963 and subsequent impressions, footnote 2 on p. 368).