Francis Bacon - aphorisms, quotes, sayings. Philosophy of Francis Bacon Francis Bacon phrases
Atheism is a thin layer of ice on which one person can walk, but an entire nation will fall into the abyss.
Wealth
Wealth is a good servant, but a worthless mistress.
Power
A person, by ruling over others, loses his own freedom.
Theft
The opportunity to steal creates a thief.
Time
In peacetime, sons bury their fathers; in wartime, fathers bury their sons.
Time is the greatest of innovators.
Heroism
Heroism is an artificial concept, because courage is relative.
Stupidity
There's no better combination than a little stupidity and not too much honesty.
Pride
Pride stripped best quality vices - she is not able to hide.
If pride rises from contempt for others to contempt for itself, it will become a philosophy.
State
Both in nature and in the state, it is easier to change many things at once than just one thing.
Money
Money is like manure: if you don't throw it around, it won't be of much use.
Money is a good servant, but a bad master.
Friendship
Friendship achieves the same result as courage, but only in a more pleasant way.
Life
In life it’s like on the road: the shortest road is usually the dirtiest, and the long one is not much cleaner.
Envy
Envy knows no days off.
True
beauty
Beauty makes virtues sparkle and vices blush.
Flattery
Most of all, we flatter ourselves.
Flattery is the style of slaves.
Logics
If a man proves to be truly skilful in logic and exercises both sound judgment and ingenuity, he is destined for great things, especially when the times are favorable.
Mercy
Measure your mercy with the size of your possessions, otherwise the Lord will measure your possessions with your insufficient mercy.
Excessive lust for power led to the fall of the angels; excessive thirst for knowledge leads to the fall of man; but mercy cannot be excessive and will not harm either angel or man.
Silence
Silence is the virtue of fools.
He who knows how to remain silent hears many confessions; for who will reveal himself to a talker and a gossip?
Wisdom
I knew one wise man who, when he saw excessive slowness, liked to say: “Let’s wait so that we can finish sooner.”
Pleasure
Only that pleasure is natural which does not know satiety.
Courage
Courage is always blind, because it does not see dangers and inconveniences, and therefore, it is bad in advice and good in execution.
Courage does not keep its word.
Habits
Reading makes a person knowledgeable, conversation makes a person resourceful, and the habit of writing makes a person accurate.
Intelligence
The human mind should not be given wings, but rather lead and weights, so that they restrain its every jump and flight.
Modesty
A modest person even assimilates the vices of others, a proud person possesses only his own.
Glory
The human mind, left to its own devices, is not trustworthy.
Courage
Real courage rarely comes without stupidity.
Death
People are afraid of death for the same reason that children are afraid of the dark, because they don't know what it's all about.
Doubts
He who begins with confidence will end with doubts; the one who begins his journey in doubt will end it in confidence.
Justice
Although justice cannot destroy vices, it does not allow them to cause harm.
Fear
There is a limit to suffering; no fear.
Luck
Fortune makes a fool of the one to whom it bestows its favor.
Philosophy
The surface in philosophy inclines the human mind towards atheism, the depth - towards religion.
Cunning
There is no greater harm to a power than mistaking cunning for wisdom.
Honesty
At least be honest enough to not lie to others.
on other topics
Libraries are crayfish where the remains of great saints are kept.
In the dark, all colors are the same.
In difficult times from business people more sense than the virtuous.
Just as money determines the value of a commodity, words determine the price of swagger.
Read not to contradict and refute, not to take it on faith, and not to find a subject for conversation; but to think and reason.
Francis Bacon (born January 22, 1561 - death April 9, 1626) is one of the most outstanding English thinkers, writer and diplomat; the most important stage in the organizational and structural formation of the “Rosicrucian brotherhood” - the Masonic lodges - is associated with his name. It is believed that it was he who set out their ideology in encrypted form in his philosophical and political writings.
Origin
Bacon comes from a high-born family that has long belonged to the British political elite (his father, a lord, was the keeper of the seal). 1575 - Francis graduates from Cambridge University, becomes a member of Parliament in 1583, and from 1618 to 1621. holds the position of Lord Chancellor of England. But, being a completely honest man and alien to court intrigues, he was eventually accused by ill-wishers of financial and political abuses, he was removed from office and put on trial, and only thanks to the personal intervention of King James I, who favored him, was he cleared of suspicion of “political crime."
The life and work of Francis Bacon
Upon his release, Francis Bacon wisely decided not to return to public service, and last years devoted his life to philosophical, natural science and literary works, publishing such works that glorified his name, such as the treatises “On the Great Restoration of the Sciences” (which he wrote throughout almost his entire life), “On the Wisdom of the Ancients” (1609), as well as “ New Atlantis" (which was published posthumously in 1627)
Although, as is known, Bacon never publicly declared that he belonged to any secret societies, a mystical aura began to develop around his name during his lifetime, which in the 19th and 20th centuries acquired a truly mythical status, especially after the publication of a series works dedicated to him, where, on the basis of information borrowed from various sources - testimonies of contemporaries, correspondence of Francis's brother, Anthony, who at one time headed the British foreign intelligence service, and, in the end, the writings of the Lord Chancellor himself, the fact of his involvement in the "occult" was proved Renaissance" in England in the 17th century. For this purpose, everything was taken into account - not only the very content of his works, but also elements of their artistic design and even hidden patterns that were revealed by analyzing the typos contained in them.
True, it must be noted that researchers were sometimes driven not so much by purely occult interest as by the desire to find confirmation of the rumors that firmly took hold of the minds of contemporaries that it was Bacon who was the author of the plays that he published under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.
Such an unbridled mixture of occultism, elements of cryptography and literary studies led to the fact that the real personality of Bacon almost completely dissolved in the “Baconian myth”, where wishful thinking is presented as reality.
Where does the myth begin?
But what really served as the initial core around which this myth developed over time?
It is well known that Bacon throughout his life took a keen interest in so-called natural or experimental magic, to which he included such “royal” sciences as alchemy and astrology, while resolutely opposing any charlatanism in this area. As Bacon believed, true science and mystical experience have nothing to do with substitution or deception. On the contrary, he advocated, in the words of A.F. Losev, for “an accurate empirical study of the real things of our real experience,” that is, for scientific and technical magic, achieving so-called “miracles” through scientific and technical means.
He outlined these principles and their forms in his works: “On the Great Restoration of the Sciences” and “Moral and Political Experiments”, where he declares science, especially applied, empirical science, to be the legitimate heir and successor of archaic magic, which, they say, by that time has already developed its internal resource and now must pass the baton to new forms of knowledge of the hidden properties of Nature.
Having learned the secret laws of matter, Bacon believed, and, first of all, the great mystery of the mutual transformation and interpenetration of substances, a person is able to achieve higher, truly divine power and begin to create new laws that will radically change his habitat, bringing it into line with high demands "king of nature"
Therefore, instead of the praises of the power and blessings of the Creator, typical of mystical literature, we find in Bacon numerous and quite detailed “miracles” described technical progress, anticipating many inventions of the distant (if we start from the time of the philosopher’s life) future: airplanes, x-rays, meteorology and much more.
That is why A.F. Losev finds it appropriate to speak in this regard about “technology of the 21st century,” meaning some special type of materialism, that is, magical and mystical materialism, aimed primarily at discovering, in the words of Bacon himself, “signs of the Creator on His creatures imprinted and fixed in matter through true and subtlest means.” According to Francis Bacon, if it is possible to achieve such a discovery, it is not through abstract scholastic theology, but through applied, experimental research, free from all prejudices and preconceptions.
The need to create organized societies
Because it is unlikely that anyone can cope with such a grandiose plan alone, Bacon points out in this regard the need to create some kind of organized societies, the members of which could actively support each other in their endeavors. “Truly,” he wrote, “just as Nature itself creates brotherhood in families, so in the process of knowledge a brotherhood cannot but develop on the basis of knowledge and morality, going back to that special paternity that is attributed to God, calling Him the Father of Enlightenment , or Sveta."
These statements leave no doubt about what kind of “brotherhood” the author was hinting at: a community of adherents of “natural magic”, within the framework of which scientific and cultural “enlightenment” would be organically supplemented by enlightenment by the divine spirit, that is, esoteric Gnosis. According to Francis Bacon, such a community of “scientific magicians” would be the main support and driving force of spiritual and scientific progress, with the ultimate goal of expanding the creative capabilities of man to the degree of godlikeness.
On the other hand, Bacon never develops or specifies this theme of the “brotherhood of the enlightened” anywhere. Moreover, he even expressed (more than once) critical remarks about some prominent representatives of Renaissance occultism, including Paracelsus himself. As you can see, this can only be explained by one thing: the need to disguise his views, because, occupying a high official position and constantly being in the center of envious attention from many rivals, he otherwise risked being branded a “heretic”, and most importantly, losing the favor of James I , who was terribly afraid of everything supernatural and even composed an extensive manual on exposing witches.
By virtue of the principle of noblesse oblige (Latin for "descent obliges") the Lord Chancellor tried to give his arguments about the "restoration of the sciences" a perhaps more traditional and innocent appearance, and he succeeded in such a way that it was not only King James who was confused , but also modern researchers.
Be that as it may, the philosopher was able to achieve his goal: he managed, without arousing suspicion or criticism, to provide himself with a “cover” for the implementation of his favorite ideas and far-reaching plans. There is no doubt that the idea of Francis Bacon as a great conspirator and cryptographer had its origin in precisely this kind of duality and came from a circle of people who were well aware of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the politician’s life.
"New Atlantis"
And perhaps we would never have known about anything if the philosopher’s heirs, sorting through his archive after his death, had not discovered a manuscript with the text of “New Atlantis,” a kind of modern version of the legendary Platonic myth. Actually, following his favorite idea of nature as a wonderful book written by the Creator in “living” letters, Bacon all the time had a deep interest in symbolic language and the interpretation of ancient myths and legends, in which, as he believed, not without reason, a secret was contained in an allegorical form. wisdom of millennia.
Thus, in a small, but quite interesting from this point of view, treatise “On the Wisdom of the Ancients,” he gave an original interpretation of 28 key images of ancient mythology, identifying each of them with some kind of metaphysical principle, or archetype. For example, Orpheus is the archetype of “universal philosophy.” Proteus is the archetype of matter. Pan is the archetype of the natural world. Promethene personifies the synthesis of science and magic, etc.
As for the “New Atlantis,” here the philosopher, among other things, “crossed” Platonic allegory with Kabbalah and more than transparent Rosicrucian symbolism. In the center of the story is a community of magicians and sages who settled on a secluded and inaccessible island in the middle of the ocean (a symbol of secret wisdom, hidden from the eyes of mere mortals), who adopted their wisdom from the biblical king Solomon, in whose memory the main center of this community is called Bensalem, that is "house of Solomon"
This community simultaneously combines the past, because its adherents are sophisticated in all forms ancient magic, and the future, since it is based on purely technocratic principles. And the lifestyle led by adherents of the Order of Bensalem, who know about everything that happens in outside world, but unknown to anyone outside the island, as if copied from the charter of some ancient mystical sect like the Pythagorean.
Thus, they are ordered to maintain the highest chastity, and carnal communication is allowed only for the purpose of procreation. (Here, without a doubt, Bacon’s rational hatred of carnal reproduction was reflected, under the influence of which he, it should be noted, became a convinced homosexual.)
This kind of description appearance and the decoration of the ritual premises in the house of Solomon are also based on hidden associations with the Rosicrucian legend and ingenious symbolic moves, while the main attributes of the decoration - astral signs and tools such as a square, compass, etc. - subsequently became the main symbols of Masonic lodges. It is obvious that the described society is nothing more than a realized Rosicrucian utopia: its members carried out the “great restoration of the sciences” and as a result returned to the state of Adam before the Fall - after all, this is exactly how Francis Bacon and the authors of the “Rosicrucian manifestos” imagined the ultimate goal of spiritual evolution humanity.
Finishing this short essay about the outstanding “Rosicrucian” of his time, one cannot help but say that the “New Atlantis” became the basis not only of all technocratic utopias of modern times, but also of the theory of the notorious “Jewish-Masonic conspiracy”, this peculiar form of militant materialism. As one of the characters in “Atlantis” (a guide to Bensalem), a wise Jew named Yaabin (this name is made up of the names of two sacred columns at the biblical temple of Solomon - Jakin and Boaz), says, the inhabitants of the island descend from the “tribe of Abraham”, and “The present laws of Bensalem are derived from the secret laws written down by Moses in the Kabala.” These words can serve as clear proof that Francis Bacon was in fact one of the most insightful and erudite people of its time!
Selected Quotes by Francis Bacon
Most of all, we flatter ourselves.
Envy never knows a holiday.
A healthy body is a living room for the soul; the patient is a prison.
Friendship doubles joys and cuts sorrows in half.
Libraries are repositories where the remains of great saints are kept.
Wealth cannot be a worthy goal of human existence.
In every person, nature grows either as grains or as weeds.
Anger is an absolute weakness; It is known that weak creatures are most susceptible to it: children, women, old people, the sick, etc.
It is impossible to be wise in love.
Three things make a nation great and prosperous: fertile soil, active industry, and easy movement of people and goods.
Books are ships of thought, traveling the waves of time and carefully carrying their precious cargo from generation to generation.
The opportunity to steal creates a thief.
Rudeness breeds hatred.
It is best to recognize a person in three situations: in solitude - since here he takes off everything ostentatious; in a fit of passion - for then he forgets all his rules; and in new circumstances - since here the force of habit leaves him.
Flattery is a product of a person's character rather than of evil will.
Flattery is the style of slaves.
A lie exposes a weak soul, a helpless mind, a vicious character.
To enjoy happiness is the greatest good; to be able to give it to others is even greater.
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One of the greatest philosophers of modern times, Francis Bacon(1561 - 1626) became the founder of the anti-scholastic method scientific knowledge, contrasting dogmatic deduction with experimental data and rational analysis.
Among his philosophical works are “Experiments, or Moral and Political Instructions”, “On the Dignity and Augmentation of Sciences”, “New Organon”, as well as the utopian novel “New Atlantis”.
However, he went down in history not only as a philosopher and scientist, but also as a politician who spent his entire life at the royal court. In his scientific works, Bacon touched upon both issues of knowledge of nature and issues of interhuman relations.
We have selected 10 quotes from his texts:
| Neither the bare hand nor the mind left to its own devices has much power. The work is accomplished with tools and aids that are needed by the mind no less than by the hand. And just as the instruments of the hand give or direct movement, so the instruments of the mind give instructions to or warn the mind. |
| In action, a person can do nothing else but connect and separate the bodies of nature. Nature does the rest within itself. |
| Anticipations constitute a fairly solid basis for agreement. After all, if people begin to go crazy according to one image and form, they can quite well come to an agreement among themselves. |
| It is vain to expect a great increase in knowledge from the introduction and grafting of the new onto the old. There must be a renewal to the last fundamentals if we do not want to forever revolve in a circle with the most insignificant movement forward. |
| It is not easy to find a way to explain and convey what we offer. For what is new in itself will only be understood by analogy with the old. |
| In youth, travel serves to replenish education, in adulthood - to replenish experience. Anyone who goes to a country without first becoming familiar with its language goes to study, not to travel. |
| Asking for advice is the greatest trust one person can place in another. |
| Happiness is like a market where, if you wait a little, the price will drop more than once. Or sometimes it resembles the offer of the Sibyl, who first offers the whole product, then destroys it part by part, but leaves the price the same. |
| Aphorisms serve not only to entertain or decorate speech; they are, of course, important and useful in business life and in civil practice. |
| Nature in man is often hidden, sometimes suppressed, but rarely destroyed. Coercion forces nature to cruelly take revenge for itself, teachings somewhat subdue its impulses, but only habit can remake and conquer it. |
Bacon, a 42-year-old lawyer looking back on his past, had to admit that most of his hopes were not realized, and his plans were still plans. In 1604, trying to gain the favor of James I, Bacon drew up the so-called “Apology” - a document designed to rehabilitate the author before the king and friends of the executed count. “Everything that I have done,” Bacon declares, “... was done for reasons of duty and service to the queen and the state.”
In 1616, Bacon became a member of the Privy Council, and in 1617 - Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In 1618, Bacon was already a lord, high chancellor and peer of England, Baron of Verulam, from 1621 - Viscount of St. Albanian - During the “non-parliamentary” rule in England, the king’s favorite, Lord Buckingham, reigned with absolute power, opposing whose style of government (wastefulness, bribery, political persecution) Bacon could not, and perhaps did not want to.
When the king finally had to convene parliament in 1621, the resentment of the parliamentarians finally found its expression. An investigation into official corruption has begun. Bacon, appearing before the court, admitted his guilt - the Peers condemned Bacon very harshly - even imprisonment in the Tower - but the king overturned the court's decision. There would be no happiness, but misfortune would help.
Retired from politics, Bacon devoted himself to that favorite activity, in which everything was decided not by intrigue and love of money, but by pure cognitive interest and deep intelligence - scientific and philosophical research. 1620 was marked by the publication of the “New Organon,” conceived as the second part of the work “The Great Restoration of the Sciences.” In 1623, the extensive work “On the Dignity and Increase of the Sciences” was published - the first part of the “Great Restoration of the Sciences”. Bacon also tried the pen in the fashionable genre in the 17th century. philosophical utopia - he writes “New Atlantis”. Among other works of the outstanding English thinker, one should also mention “Thoughts and Observations”, “On the Wisdom of the Ancients”, “On Heaven”, “On Causes and Principles”, “The History of the Winds”, “The History of Life and Death”, “The History of Henry VII” etc. Francis Bacon died on April 9, 1626.
Francis Bacon was the first thinker to make experiential knowledge the core of his philosophy. He ended the era of the late Renaissance and, together with R. Descartes, proclaimed the main principles characteristic of the philosophy of the New Age. It was F. Bacon who briefly expressed one of the fundamental commandments of new thinking: “Knowledge is power.” In this short aphorism one can discern the slogan and pathos of F. Bacon’s entire philosophical system. Thanks to him, the man-nature relationship is understood in a new way, which is transformed into the subject-object relationship, and becomes part of the flesh and blood of the European mentality, the European style of thinking, which continues to this day; we all feel the influence of Bacon’s ideas. Man is presented as a cognizing and active principle (subject), and nature is represented as an object to be known and used. Activist utilitarianism believes that with the advent of man, nature splits into subject and object, which are both separated and connected through instrumental activity. "The natural scientific method of presentation explores nature as a calculable system of forces. In knowledge, in science, Bacon saw a powerful tool for progressive social change. Based on this, he placed the “house of Solomon” - the house of wisdom in his work “New Atlantis” - at the center of social life. At the same time, F. Bacon called on “all people to ensure that they do not engage in it, neither for the sake of their spirit, nor for the sake of some scientific disputes, nor for the sake of neglecting others, nor for the sake of self-interest and glory, nor in order to achieve power, nor for any other base intentions, but so that life itself may benefit and succeed from it." For Bacon, nature is the object of science, which provides the means for man to strengthen his dominance over the forces of nature (this will be described in more detail below) .
In an effort to connect “thought and things,” F. Bacon formulated the principles of a new philosophical and methodological approach. “New Logic” opposes not only the traditional Aristotelian concept of thinking, its organon, but also the medieval scholastic methodology, which rejected the significance of empiricism, the data of sensory perceived reality. According to K. Marx, F. Bacon is the founder of “English materialism and all modern experimental science” and “in Bacon, as its first creator, materialism still harbors in its naive form the germs of comprehensive development. Matter smiles with its poetic and sensual brilliance on the whole person.”
Francis Bacon is the founder of English materialism and the methodology of experimental science.
Bacon's philosophy combined empiricism with theology, a naturalistic worldview with the principles of the analytical method.
Bacon contrasted reasoning about God with the doctrine of “natural” philosophy, which is based on experimental consciousness. As a materialist empiricist, Bacon (along with Hobbes, Locke, Condillac) argued that sensory experience reflects in knowledge only objectively existing things (as opposed to subjective-idealistic empiricism, which recognized subjective experience as the only reality)
In contrast to rationalism (Descartes), in empiricism rational-cognitive activity is reduced to various combinations of the material that is given in experience, and is interpreted as adding nothing to the content of knowledge.
Here empiricists were faced with insoluble difficulties in isolating the outgoing components of experience and reconstructing on this basis all types and forms of consciousness. To explain the actual cognitive process, empiricists are forced to go beyond sensory data and consider them along with the characteristics of consciousness (such as memory, active functioning of the mind) and logical operations (inductive generalization), turn to the categories of logic and mathematics to describe experimental data as means building theoretical knowledge. Attempts by empiricists to substantiate induction on a purely empirical basis and to present logic and mathematics as a simple inductive generalization of sensory experience failed completely.
The main purpose of the writings of Francis Bacon, like the vocation of his entire philosophy, was “to restore in general, or at least bring to a better form, that communication between the mind and things, to which there is scarcely anything comparable on earth, or at least that -or earthly." From a philosophical point of view, the concepts used in the sciences that have become vague and sterile deserve special regret and urgent correction. Hence the need to “return to things with better means and carry out a restoration of the sciences and arts and all human knowledge in general, established on proper grounds.”
Bacon believed that science had made little progress along the path of unbiased, experimental study of nature since the time of the ancient Greeks. Bacon observed a different situation in the mechanical arts: “they, as if having received some kind of life-giving breath, grow and improve every day...”. But even people who “set sail on the waves of experience” think little about the original concepts and principles. So, Bacon calls on his contemporaries and descendants to pay special attention to the development of sciences and to do this for the sake of vital benefit and practice, precisely for the “use and dignity of man.”
Bacon opposes current prejudices regarding science in order to give scientific research a high status. It is with Bacon that a sharp change in orientation in European culture begins. Science, from a suspicious and idle pastime in the eyes of many people, is gradually becoming an important, prestigious field. human culture. In this regard, many scientists and philosophers of modern times follow in the footsteps of Bacon: in place of scholastic knowledge, divorced from technical practice and knowledge of nature, they put science, still closely connected with philosophy, but at the same time based on special experiences and experiments.
“The activities and efforts that promote the development of science,” writes Bacon in the Dedication to the King for the Second Book of the “Great Restoration of the Sciences,” “concern three objects: scientific institutions, books and the scientists themselves.” In all these areas, Bacon has enormous merit. He drew up a detailed and well-thought-out plan for changing the education system (including measures for its financing, approval of charters and regulations). One of the first politicians and philosophers in Europe, he wrote: “in general, it should be firmly remembered that significant progress in revealing the deep secrets of nature is hardly possible unless funds are provided for experiments...”. We need a revision of teaching programs and university traditions, cooperation between European universities.
However, Bacon saw his main contribution as a philosopher to the theory and practice of science in providing an updated philosophical and methodological foundation for science. He thought of the sciences as connected in unified system, each part of which in turn must be finely differentiated.