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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral Drawing the map of knowledge Ordering, disordering, reordering knowledge Bacon’s literary quest for scientific knowledge Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Ordering Knowledge

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    Table des matières

    Bacon’s Literary Quest for Scientific Knowledge in Gesta Grayorum (1594) and New Atlantis (1627)

    Mickaël Popelard

    p. 41-63

    Texte intégral Drawing the map of knowledge Ordering, disordering, reordering knowledge Bacon’s literary quest for scientific knowledge Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1Francis Bacon is a methodical thinker, a substantial portion of whose works deal with the ordering of knowledge. As is well-known, he consistently argued for a comprehensive reformation of scientific research with a view to making science conducive to human happiness. Part of his scientific method is based on the need to compile as complete a natural history as possible so as to ascend inductively, by dint of tables of presence and absence, to the true forms of nature. For science to progress, natural historical facts must be gathered and ordered. This, Bacon explains, is the first step towards the interpretation of nature. In this chapter, my focus will not be on Bacon’s scientific method as such but rather on his classification of science and his literary quest for scientific knowledge. By this I mean that Bacon sometimes carefully distinguishes between literature – which he calls poetry – and science – or philosophy – only to blur the boundaries at other times. Like Penelope unravelling her burial shroud, Bacon seems to defy and transgress his own categories. I would like to show that a measure of disorder can turn out to be scientifically productive. To put it differently, what Bacon’s works show is that for science to progress, knowledge must be successively or perhaps simultaneously ordered, disordered and reordered. I will start by studying his ordering of knowledge in The Advancement of Learning before explaining how Bacon at once challenges and disrupts his own classification of knowledge in both The Advancement of Learning and some of his literary works. Finally, I will try to demonstrate that such a reshuffling of classificatory boundaries allows Bacon to make the reader take a more active part in the construction of knowledge.

    Drawing the map of knowledge

    2There is no denying that ordering knowledge is one of Francis Bacon’s prime concerns. As early as 1605, the date at which The Advancement of Learning was published, Bacon insisted on the need for scholars to draw an accurate map of knowledge as a necessary prelude to the ‘augmentation and propagation of learning and knowledge’ he was calling for. Drawing such a map of knowledge is precisely what the second book of The Advancement of Learning is concerned with. Indeed, without a proper inventory of the current state of knowledge, that is to say without a full and complete assessment of what constitutes firm ground for further research, coupled with a list of all the still insufficiently developed areas of studies, there can be no real progress.1 As a consequence, Bacon sets himself a twofold task: his ambition, he says, is to distinguish between those fields of knowledge in which research has come to fruition and those which still need to be ploughed more thoroughly so as to yield better fruits for mankind. His is both a retrospective and a prospective approach:

    Wherefore I will now attempt to make a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a plot made and recorded to memory may both minister light to any public designation, and, also serve to excite voluntary endeavours. Wherein, nevertheless, my purpose is at this time to note only omissions and deficiencies, and not to make any redargution of errors or incomplete prosecutions. For it is one thing to set forth what ground lieth unmanured, and another thing to correct ill husbandry in that which is manured.2

    3In order to establish what ‘ground lieth unmanured’, to use Bacon’s phrase, one must first determine the lay of the land. Ordering knowledge therefore becomes a prerequisite for the ‘general and faithful perambulation’ Bacon aims at conducting. In rather unconventional fashion,3 Bacon divides human knowledge into three distinct provinces. These correspond to the three parts of man’s understanding, with history relating to memory, poetry referring to man’s imagination and philosophy deriving from his reason: ‘the parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man’s understanding, which is the seat of learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, and philosophy to his reason.’4 In the rest of the book, Bacon proceeds to examine the different parts of learning one by one, starting with history, in order to determine what subjects require further investigation. My aim here is not to go into the details of the book or review all the flaws and deficiencies Bacon identifies. Rather, I would like to point out that Bacon draws a clear distinction between poetry and philosophy as subjects pertaining to two different regions of man’s understanding. Though he argues that the separation between history, poetry and philosophy is not a hermetical sealing off, he does ascribe specific functions to each part of human learning while also linking each individual field to a different intellectual faculty (namely memory, imagination and reason). Unlike Sidney who famously elevated the poet above both the philosopher and the historian and presented poetry as ‘the monarch of all the sciences’,5 Bacon’s concern is not with ranking the fields of knowledge but with classifying or ordering them. He shows little interest in establishing an order of precedence between the three ‘parts of human learning’. Unlike his predecessors, Bacon’s approach is more horizontal than vertical, as indicated by his preferred terminology. Words like ‘partition’, ‘division’ or ‘distribution’ entail no necessary hierarchy between the individual sciences.6 Consider, for example, the following passage from The Advancement of Learning:

    But because the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs; therefore it is good, before we enter into the former distribution, to erect and constitute one universal science, by the name of philosophia prima, primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way, before we come where the ways part and divide themselves; which science whether I should report as deficient or no, I stand doubtful.7

    4According to Bacon, the different parts of learning are like the ‘branches of a tree’, and as such, they originate in a common ‘stem’. It will perhaps be argued that the metaphor of the tree points to a form of verticality that confirms rather than denies hierarchy. Yet, in this passage, Bacon is concerned not with all three sciences but with philosophy only. Whatever hierarchy there may be within this particular subsection of the entire field of knowledge should therefore not necessarily be transferred to the relationship between history, poetry and philosophy as it is clear that Bacon places these three subjects on a par with one another.

    5On the other hand, Bacon goes on to explain that ‘these distributions and partitions of knowledge’ should not be seen as absolute, but accepted as ‘veins and lines’, so that the entireness of knowledge can be preserved:

    And generally let this be a rule, that all partitions of knowledges be accepted rather for lines and veins than for sections and separations; and that the continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved. For the contrary hereof hath made particular sciences to become barren, shallow, and erroneous, while they have not been nourished and maintained from the common fountain. So we see Cicero, the orator, complained of Socrates and his school, that he was the first that separated philosophy and rhetoric; whereupon rhetoric became an empty and verbal art.8

    6In other words, by separating history from poetry or poetry from philosophy one runs the risk of making knowledge ‘barren, shallow and erroneous’. What is required instead is a more comprehensive approach to knowledge, one that does not isolate the individual sciences from the ‘common fountain of knowledge’. For rhetoric or poetry not to become a mere ‘empty and verbal art’, it needs to remain connected to philosophy. In other words, poetry should not be conceived of as that ‘glib and oily art’ Cordelia alludes to in King Lear (1.1.216),9 but rather as a way of acquiring knowledge in its own right.

    7In recent years, much stimulating new work has been done on the blurring of disciplinary boundaries in the early modern period. As Dana Jalobeanu, Guido Giglioni and Sorana Corneanu explain, the alleged dichotomy between ‘literary’ and ‘epistemic’ genres within the early modern culture has been exposed as being largely ‘a projection of contemporary concerns (ie mostly ill-digested positivism) onto the much more variegated and changeable landscape of the early modern period’.10 Scholars like Ayesha Ramachandran have shown, for example, how the imaginative work of poetry could help to reconfigure existing notions of space and geography, while authors like Carla Mazzio, Howard Marchitello or Elizabeth Spiller have made it possible to rethink the old ‘influence model’ of the science versus literature binary along more egalitarian, dynamic and discursive lines.11 Following on this work, this essay will argue that, at the same time that he is ordering knowledge, Bacon is also blurring, or at least reshuffling, the boundaries. Such a dynamic and holistic approach serves, I think, an epistemological function in terms of the production of new knowledge.

    8Nowhere perhaps is such a fully integrated conception of knowledge more evident than in Gesta Grayorum and New Atlantis, two attempts at constructing knowledge literarily.

    Ordering, disordering, reordering knowledge

    9As Bacon himself acknowledges, and as I have already pointed out, The Advancement of Learning is perhaps as much about ordering knowledge as it is about crossing and shuffling epistemological boundaries – what Bacon calls ‘altering the divisions’.12 A case in point involves the treatment of rhetorical tools, which Bacon puts in the service of natural philosophy. This is all the more necessary as philosophical knowledge often lies ‘beyond popular opinions’, which is why natural philosophers must ‘have recourse to similitudes and translations to express themselves.’13 The same crossing of boundaries occurs in a number of his other works, including the early ‘Orations at Graies Inne Revells’ (1595) – later referred to as Gesta Grayorum, after the title of the first published edition of the work (1688) – and the posthumous New Atlantis (1627). Why he did so is precisely the question I would like to address here by focusing on these two apparently refractory texts, starting with the first one in chronological order, namely Gesta Grayorum. Is there more to it than mere didacticism?

    10As Brian Vickers explains in his edition of the text, ‘in the Elizabethan period, as today, the four London Inns of Court (Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple) combined the role of Law Faculties at continental universities (training students to be barristers) with that of governing the legal profession.’14 The Inns often held feasts and other celebrations, especially during the Christmas vacation.15 Gesta Grayorum was composed for one such period of celebrations in the winter of 1594–1595, the festivities lasting from 20 December to Shrovetide, that is to say just before Lent. A Lord of Misrule, also known as the ‘Prince of Purpoole’ – after the name of the place where Gray’s Inn was built – was elected by the students to preside over the occasion. This is especially relevant here as Gesta Grayorum consists of six speeches delivered to the ‘Prince of Purpoole’ by so many counsellors. There is every reason to believe that Bacon’s orations were performed in front of a select audience of Elizabethan dignitaries and officials, including William Cecil, himself a member of Gray’s Inn, and some Privy Counsellors. In Bacon’s text, each speaker successively argues for his preferred way of life, explaining why it is the best possible life for a Prince to lead. Thus, they echo and reflect what the real counsellors present in the audience would do on a daily basis when advising their sovereign on matters of state – though the contents of their discussions were probably of a political rather than philosophical nature. Brian Vickers notes:

    the ideas contained in these speeches have many parallels with Bacon’s writings on civic and political matters, and the speech on behalf of philosophy is a virtual digest of his lifelong programme for the reformation of scientific research, with some details only reappearing in the posthumously published New Atlantis.16

    11Alan Stewart, the other modern editor of the text, concurs with Vickers that ‘in the midst of the Grayan revelry, Bacon seized the opportunity to forward plans that would remain central to his philosophy for the rest of his life.’17

    12The speech arguing in favour of philosophy is obviously the one on which I would like to focus here. It will be noted that Vickers points out two interesting facts with regard to the ordering of knowledge. First, Bacon’s literary device anticipates some of the themes he developed elsewhere in his non-fictional texts; second, it also contains a number of details which, although dealing with Bacon’s lifelong plan for scientific reformation, can only be found in these two literary works. The question therefore becomes whether some ideas are better – that is to say more clearly, or perhaps more convincingly – expressed in literary garb?

    13The second counsellor’s speech consists of four parts: after rejecting the first counsellor’s claim that the ‘exercise of war’ is the best course of action for a Prince, on the twofold ground that the best authors have condemned conquerors as ‘rovers and witches’ and that reason is divine whereas force is bestial, the second counsellor urges the Prince to turn his attention to the philosophical conquest of nature rather than the military conquest of people and territories:

    But I contrariewise will wish unto your Excellence the excellent exercice of the best and purest parte of your mynde, and the most inocent and meriting conquest being upon the works of nature; making this proposition, that yow bend the excellencie of your spirit, and the greate commande that you have ouer so manie excellent spirits, to the searching out, inuenting, and discouering of what soeuer is hidden and secret in the world. That your Excellence maie not be as a lamp, that shineth to others and seeth not it self; but as the eye of the world, that both carrieth and useth light.18

    14In the third part of the speech the counsellor proceeds to remind the Prince that the great rulers of the past have always valued knowledge and that ‘generally those Kingdoms were accounted most happy, that had Rulers most addicted to Philosophy.’19 Finally, he lays out his plan for the cultivation and advancement of knowledge. The Prince is to set himself four tasks: first, he must collect a perfect library containing the best books in the world; second, he must plant ‘a most spacious and wonderfull gardin’ with plants and animals from all over the world. This garden will become something like a miniature version of the world, or to quote from Bacon’s text, ‘a modell of uniuersall nature made private’. Thirdly, the Prince is to gather all the machines, instruments and mechanical devices made by the hand of man into a ‘goodlie huge Cabinett’. And finally, he must build a laboratory ‘furnished with mills, instruments, furnaces and vessels, as maie be a pallace fit worthie to recreate the philosophers stone.’20 By bringing together in one place the natural historical knowledge of the humanists (in his library and garden), the technology of the craftsmen (in his cabinet) and whatever concrete results the alchemists may be said to have achieved (in his laboratory), the Prince will elucidate all possible miracles and wonders and remain ‘the onelie miracle of the world’.21

    15It is not difficult to see how this text anticipates the Novum Organum’s theory of the two complementary faces of knowledge, the theoretical and the practical – a theory encapsulated both in the counsellor’s urging the prince to become ‘as the eye of the world, that both carrieth and useth light’ and in his sycophantically optimistic conclusion: ‘thus when your Excellence shall have added depth of knowledge to the rareness of your spirit, and the greatness of your power, then shall yow be Trismegistus.’22 As Bacon explains in Novum Organum, ‘human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.’23 In other words, after studying both natural and mechanical history in his library, his garden and his cabinet, the philosopher will become capable of laying bare the true laws of nature – or true forms, in Baconian parlance. Equipped with such knowledge, he is also capable of reproducing it (in his laboratory).

    16It is important to realize that practice is not to be conceived of as the mere consequence of theory. Rather, speculation and operation go hand in hand. They supplement each other in the sense that theory makes practice more effective, while practice, in turn, makes theory more accurate and complete. True to his inductive approach, Bacon believed that knowledge can only be constructed through a methodical process whereby natural historical facts are first compiled, then gradually refined into axioms, thus finally leading to the discovery of the true forms of nature. Consequently, Bacon’s conception of knowledge is very remote from Aristotle’s because it is not purely speculative but grounded in what Antonio Perez-Ramos has called the maker’s knowledge tradition.24 Theory and practice – or to use Bacon’s terminology, speculation and operation – should be seen as the two sides of the same scientific coin. This suggests that Gesta Grayorum can be read as a blueprint for some of the key ideas which would be further developed and conceptualized in the Novum Organum.

    17What this early work also indicates is that Bacon’s philosophical ideas are sometimes embedded, or, at the very least, adumbrated and foreshadowed, in his fictional prose. It is not uncommon for Bacon to use a literary form to convey his philosophical theories. Yet, in so doing, he also tends to redraw the very boundaries he himself delineated in the first place in The Advancement of Learning, although it must be acknowledged that even in this work Bacon can be seen oscillating between the need to classify and the urge to adjust or ‘[alter] the divisions’. As Bacon indicates, such oscillation springs, in part, from methodological considerations:

    for there is a double necessity imposed upon me of altering the divisions. The one, because it differeth in end and purpose, to sort together those things which are next in nature, and those things which are next in use. […] The other, because the bringing in of the deficiencies did by consequence alter the partitions of the rest.25

    18Disordering knowledge seems just as essential a task as ordering it. On the one hand, Bacon draws up a map of knowledge in which poetry, history and philosophy constitute separate provinces. But on the other hand, he also reshuffles and reorganizes his own categories according to his needs, much as a secretary of state does when sorting out his papers: ‘for if a secretary of state should sort his papers, it is like in his study or general cabinet he would sort together things of a nature, as treaties, instructions, &c. but in his boxes or particular cabinet he would sort together those that he were like to use together, though of several natures.’26 Philosophy and ‘poesy’ may not be ‘next in nature’, but they are sometimes ‘next in use’.

    19A similar tendency to reorganize disciplinary categories and think in terms of use, or function, rather than nature, or subjects, is also at work in New Atlantis. Much like Bacon when writing The Advancement of Learning, the Father of the House of Salomon turns out to be concerned with reordering knowledge and ‘altering (received) divisions’. While all the fellows work towards a common goal, i.e. ‘the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things’, they are assigned clearly differentiated functions in accordance with their different statuses. For example, the Merchants of Light’s role is to ‘sail into foreign countries’27 so as to glean as much literary, scientific and technical new information as possible, whereas the Pioneers’ or Miners’ task is to try new experiments. But the roles are not defined in terms of sheer disciplinary competence – mathematicians concerning themselves with mathematics and lawyers with the law, etc. – but in more functional terms.28 Each new piece of knowledge, whether it is ‘literary’ or ‘scientific’, theoretical or practical, becomes a cog in the grand machinery of Bacon’s reformed scientific method. In the early stages of the process of discovery, knowledge is primarily used to devise new experiments, while at a later stage, it is refined (by the Interpreters of Nature) into ‘greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms’. But whether such knowledge is of a literary, natural historical or chemical nature, for example, is quite immaterial.

    20Because the House of Salomon’s primary aim is not to draw a comprehensive map of all the existing sciences, as was the case in The Advancement of Learning, but rather to show how new knowledge can be produced and science furthered, the Father’s speech is more active than passive. It places considerable emphasis on experimenting with nature, rather than merely urging the prince to build a library, a cabinet, a garden and a laboratory to serve as repositories of the current state of knowledge. The ideas put forward by the second counsellor in Gesta Grayorum are now rearranged in a different order. They are neither presented in terms of objects (or places) of knowledge, as the second counsellor did when urging the prince to create for himself ‘in a small compass a model of universal nature made private’, nor subsumed into one of the three ‘parts of learning’ (i.e. history, poetry, philosophy) delineated in The Advancement of Learning. For one thing, the Father of the House of Salomon does not mention the presence of a library in his scientific academy. This does not mean that the scientists in New Atlantis do not read books for we are also told that some of the fellows of the House of Salomon are to roam the world for ‘books, abstracts, and patterns of experiment’. But in New Atlantis, the main focus is on doing, rather than seeing (or reading, for that matter). Much as the prospective princely palace described by Gesta Grayorum, Bacon’s utopian island is fitted with a laboratory, a cabinet and a garden in which the scientists are left free to conduct all sorts of experiments. For example, the Fellows of the House of Salomon perform various experiments on animals and plants with a view to making them bigger, better or more beautiful and productive than they are in Europe:

    We have also large and various orchards and gardens wherein we do not so much respect beauty, as variety of ground and soil, proper for divers trees and herbs. […] We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which we use not only for view or rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man. […] By art likewise, we make them greater or taller than their kind is; and contrariwise dwarf them and stay their growth; we make them more fruitful and bearing than their kind is; and contrariwise barren and not generative.29

    21But the cabinet for mechanical arts and the alchemist’s laboratory are also present in New Atlantis, as evidenced by the Father’s presentation of his Scientific College:

    We have also divers mechanical arts, which you have not; and stuff made by them; as papers, linen, silks, tissues, dainty works of feathers of wonderful lustre, excellent dyes, and many others, and shops likewise, as well for such as are not brought into vulgar use amongst us as for those that are…We have also furnaces of great diversities, and that keep great diversity of heats, fierce and quick; strong and constant; soft and mild; blown, quiet; dry, moist; and the like.30

    22All in all, New Atlantis reads like a more complete and more active version of the plan put forward by the second counsellor in Gesta Grayorum. Like Bacon’s early piece, it illustrates his lifelong attempt at reconciling literature and philosophy. What these two texts demonstrate is that literature, like philosophy, can serve as a vehicle for actively constructing new knowledge. They also remind us that, in the Renaissance, literature (or ‘poetry’) was bound up with ethical and practical issues – a connection that the next section will now address more specifically.

    Bacon’s literary quest for scientific knowledge

    23It is commonly assumed that philosophy is a way of acquiring knowledge whereas literature only serves a recreative or illustrative purpose. One reads poetry because it gives a sensuous expression to conceptual thinking, thus bridging the gap between the mind and the senses. In the present context, this means that difficult theories need to be dressed up and presented in a more alluring form if they are to be understood by more than a handful of initiates. Was it not also Sidney’s view that:

    of all sciences…is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way but giveth a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass further.31

    24In other words, one may be tempted to think that literature is purely derivative and, as it were, secondary: it does not produce scientific or philosophical knowledge, but only showcases it. In The Advancement of Learning, Bacon also explains that unlike philosophy, poetry is not bound by the laws of nature. Springing from man’s imagination, it is ‘not tied to the laws of matter’ and ‘may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things.’32 This is the main difference between philosophy and poetry for, Bacon continues, poetry ‘doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.’33 Yet, although poetry has more to do with the appearance of truth than with truth itself, as it consists in a ‘feigned history’, this does not mean that it can be of no use to philosophy. On the contrary, fables and parables have a strong philosophical and theological import, which is why Bacon devoted his De Sapientia Veterum to interpreting the myths of the ancient Greeks, which he calls ‘the fables of the poets’. In Bacon’s opinion, Greek myths constituted one of the two main sources of information about the early stages of life on earth, the other being the Bible or divine revelation.34 What Bacon calls ‘allusive or parabolical poetry’ is defined as:

    A narration applied only to express some special purpose or conceit; which latter kind of parabolical wisdom was much more in use in the ancient times, as by the fables of Æsop, and the brief sentences of the seven, and the use of hieroglyphics may appear. And the cause was (for that it was then of necessity to express any point of reason which was more sharp or subtle than the vulgar in that manner) because men in those times wanted both variety of examples and subtlety of conceit. And as hieroglyphics were before letters, so parables were before arguments; and nevertheless now and at all times they do retain much life and rigour, because reason cannot be so sensible nor examples so fit.35

    25Allusive poetry, therefore, is defined by Bacon as philosophy in literature’s clothing. It speaks both to the mind and to the senses. Interestingly enough, William Rawley, Bacon’s chaplain, offers the same kind of justification at the beginning of New Atlantis: ‘this fable my Lord devised, to the end that he might exhibit therein a model or description of a college instituted for the interpreting of nature and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men, under the name of Salomon’s House, or the College of the Six Days’ Works.’36 Bacon’s aim was to ‘exhibit’ a model for the interpretation of nature and the production of works, because he wanted to illustrate the main tenets of his philosophy. A case in point is Bacon’s insistence in his theoretical works that nature (and books) be scoured for facts with a view to collecting as comprehensive and complete a natural history as possible. According to Bacon, such a history will serve as a basis for the interpretation of nature and the discovery of forms, as is made clear in the Novum Organum: ‘First of all we must prepare a natural and experimental history, sufficient and good; and this is the foundation of all, for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.’37 In order to achieve such an aim, the aspiring natural philosopher must leave no stone unturned – quite literally. The natural history Bacon calls for as a preparatory step for his inquiry into nature should be as thorough and complete as possible, and so should the subsequent experiments leading to the discovery of the true forms of nature. 38 This is precisely what New Atlantis shows in a fictional form as the fellows of the House of Salomon are said to study every nook and cranny of the island they live on. They are shown to occupy all the available space:

    we have large and deep caves of several depths: the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom; and some of them are digged and made under great hills and mountains; […] we have high towers; the highest about half a mile in height; and some of them likewise set upon high mountains; so that the vantage of the hill with the tower is in the highest of them three miles at least.39

    26By giving a more concrete and figurative form to Bacon’s theoretical ideas, literature becomes ancillary to philosophy.

    27Even if there was no more to it than that, literature could therefore still be said to fulfil an epistemic or cognitive function of a kind by making ideas which would otherwise remain abstruse accessible to a wider audience. To use Bacon’s own phrase, it serves to ‘express some special purpose or conceit.’ Yet I would like to argue that the Gesta Grayorum and New Atlantis are more than mere literary illustrations of Bacon’s philosophy. If both works can be said to blur the boundaries between the different fields of knowledge as defined by Bacon in The Advancement of Learning, thus generating (apparent) epistemic disorder, rather than classificatory order, as it were, it is because they do more than just illustrate or express knowledge. My contention is that Bacon’s literary works go some way towards creating new knowledge and furthering his philosophy. This, I think, is done in (at least) two complementary ways.

    28On the one hand, Bacon’s literary works occasionally introduce fresh philosophical material. They sometimes contain original ideas which, as Brian Vickers has noted, are not necessarily present in Bacon’s other works.40 But on the other hand – and this is my main point – fables also fulfil a practical function. As such, they bear a close affinity with rhetoric whose ‘duty and office’ it is ‘to apply Reason to imagination for the better moving of the will.’41 One way of doing so is by allowing the reader to become involved in the construction of knowledge. As he couches his philosophical ideas in literary language, Bacon also inevitably introduces a measure of ambiguity, openness and polysemy into his text. Confronted with such ambiguity, the reader is led to take an active part in the construction of knowledge. This is what Bacon sometimes calls ‘knowledge broken’, which the writing of fables and aphorisms exemplifies.42 Bacon was quite aware of the fact that how something is said matters just as much as, and sometimes even more than, what is said: ‘and lastly, aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to enquire farther; whereas methods, carrying the shew of a total, do secure men, as if they were at furthest.43 As Lisa Jardine points out, what is needed is an initiative, rather than dogmatic or magistral method for both the transmission and furtherance of knowledge: ‘initiative methods are those which display the stages by which the author’s conclusion were reached, so that the reader may both check that he would have reached the same conclusions on the same evidence, and pursue the investigation further if he so chooses.’44 Substituting an initiative method for the magistral methods currently in use is capital not just in terms of the transmission of knowledge but also in terms of its progression, as Bacon explains in very clear fashion:

    neither is the method or the nature of the tradition material only to the use of knowledge, but likewise to the progression of knowledge: for since the labour and life of one man cannot attain to perfection of knowledge, the wisdom of the Tradition is that which inspireth the felicity of continuance and proceeding. And therefore the most real diversity of method is of method referred to Use, and method referred to Progression; whereof the one may be termed Magistral, and the other of Probation.45

    29According to Bacon, this initiative method is still ‘via deserta et interclusa’ (i.e. a way deserted and shut off).

    30What I would like to suggest is that New Atlantis (and Bacon’s other literary works) are perhaps best understood as illustrating Bacon’s new initiative method. When reading Bacon’s scientific ‘fable’, one has to try to make sense of the necessary blanks of the narration and negotiate what is left unsaid by the narrator or characters. For example, critics have often commented on the virtual effacement of the king, pointing out that such an absence opens a space for a radical, even republican interpretation of the text. Another example includes the place of secrecy and censorship in Bensalem.46 My point is that it is for readers to decide what to make of the text’s indeterminacy. From passive readers, they are invited to become active actors whose role is not just to interpret, but also to appropriate whatever philosophical truth the text contains. That readers need to participate more in the furthering of knowledge than has hitherto been the case is a view that Bacon clearly puts forward in several of his works, including his Cogitata et visa and the preface of Novum Organum, where he urges those readers who seek certain knowledge and want to ‘overcome nature in action’ to ‘join themselves with him as true sons of knowledge’.47 Speaking metaphorically, Bacon suggests his readers should be gardeners, rather than carpenters: ‘so the delivery of knowledges (as it is now used) is as of fair bodies of trees without the roots; good for the carpenters, but not for the planters; but if you have sciences grow, it is less matter for the shaft or body of the tree, so you look well to the taking up of the roots.’48 One possible role for readers would be to turn into ‘merchants of light’, thus taking part, in their turn, in ‘a trade, not for gold, silver, or jewels, nor for silks; nor for spices; nor any other commodity of matter, but only for God’s first creature, which was Light: to have light (I say) of the growth of all parts of the world.’49 In De L’utopie, Pierre Macherey muses that perhaps Christopher Columbus, Gutenberg or Tycho Brahé were in fact Bensalemite agents in disguise, concluding that ‘Bensalem does not constitute a goal or a future distant from our present state and totally different from it; rather, it is already close at hand, perhaps even within us already in the form of some hidden influence taking hold of our minds, although we do not know it yet.’50 Conversely, we may also argue that the Father of the House of Salomon invites ‘the sons of knowledge’ to become the new Columbuses, Gutenbergs or Tycho Brahés by embracing Bacon’s plan for the reform of science. Should this prove too grandiose a hope, a more realistic ambition would be for readers to participate in the advancement of science on a more modest level. Enlisting the help of other truth-seekers in the gleaning of new data (‘the Merchants of Light’) or ‘the collecting of experiments that are in the books’ (‘the Depredators’) are tasks which require little more than time and an unshakeable faith in the new method.51 After all, it should not be forgotten that New Atlantis was originally juxtaposed with Sylva Sylvarum, a work which, as Sarah Hutton rightly reminds us, was written and published in the hope that ‘others would contribute to the project of new discovery’ and whose ‘rough-hewn effect’ was entirely deliberate. Like Sylva Sylvarum, New Atlantis and Bacon’s other literary works therefore ‘[bespeak] co-operation, openness and inclusiveness’.52 According to Rawley, in the preface to Sylva Sylvarum, this was the reason why

    his Lordship’ (meaning Bacon) would not put these Particulars into any exact Method…, because he conceived that other men would now think that they could do the like; And so goe on with a further Collection: which if the Method had been Exact, many would have despaired to attain by Imitation.53

    31This may also very well be why New Atlantis concludes on a call for action from the Father of the House of Salomon to each and every reader of the book: ‘God bless thee my son, and God bless the relation which I have made. I give thee leave to publish it for the good of other nations; for we are here in God’s bosom, a land unknown.’54 By combining the philosophical and the aesthetic – the text created by the author and the realization accomplished by the reader – New Atlantis exemplifies a hybrid genre of writing – one that is more inclusive than traditional philosophy because it ascribes a more active role to readers than is usually the case. Interestingly enough, such an approach to Bacon’s New Atlantis tallies with the Renaissance view that rhetoric should be conducive to ethics.55 This view was so common at the time that it can be found in most, if not all, rhetorical treatises of the period. Suffice it to quote the following extract from Sidney’s An Apologie for Poetry. Sidney argues that poetry has transformative effects on readers, turning them as it does into so many ‘Cyruses’:

    Which delivering forth, also, is not wholly imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the air; but so far substantially it works, not only to make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency, as nature might have done, but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how that maker made him.56

    32In this view, the poet becomes a ‘maker’ in the true sense of the word indeed.

    33If poetry and ethics go hand in hand, so do literature and philosophy. Although it may be useful to differentiate between the ‘parts of human learning’, it is equally important not to partition the continent of knowledge into hermetically sealed-off provinces. Bacon himself made the rule that ‘all partitions of knowledges be accepted rather for lines and veins, than for sections and separations; and that the continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved.’57 The methodical ordering and ‘general perambulation of learning’ Bacon conducted in The Advancement was a necessary, albeit only preliminary, step towards the reshuffling and disordering of existing categories. The Advancement of Learning, Gesta Grayorum and New Atlantis point to philosophy and literature being ‘next in use’, if not ‘next in nature’: on the one hand, philosophy sometimes relies on literature for didactic purposes. On the other, literature makes it easier for readers to appropriate the philosopher’s meaning on both the conceptual and operative levels, as I have tried to suggest. To put it differently, we are invited to think not in disciplinary but in functional terms. What matters is not so much what field of knowledge a given text belongs to, or whether it is to be classified along philosophical or literary lines, but rather what particular function it fulfils. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, it is far from certain that New Atlantis, Gesta Grayorum and Novum Organum perform totally different functions. To a certain extent, New Atlantis also performs what it describes, as I have tried to demonstrate. To take Bacon at his word, and just like Novum Organum, ‘it invites men to enquire farther.’ Much as the fellows of Salomon’s House are defined on the basis of the work they carry out, rather than according to the particular discipline they specialize in, so I would like to argue that Bacon’s literary and philosophical works need not be seen as falling into radically different epistemic or disciplinary categories. After all, Bacon never tired of repeating that truth is a collective thing: only by collaborating with one another will it become possible for philosophers to truly interpret nature. New Atlantis is perhaps best understood as a supplement to both Novum Organum and Sylva Sylvarum,58 a call to arms, so to speak. It does much more than simply offer a mere illustration of Bacon’s lifelong programme for the reformation of scientific research. In that regard, it is fitting that New Atlantis should be an unfinished work for its very openness makes it possible for readers – should they feel so inclined of course, and endowed with the necessary skills – not just to (re)order knowledge, but also to construct it actively by appropriating Bacon’s philosophy. To quote Bacon one more (and final) time: ‘atque hominum ingenia et meditationes ad judicandum et ad inveniendum simul excitabant.’59

    Notes de bas de page

    1 As Michèle Le Dœuff explains in the preface to her translation of Bacon’s The Advancement (Du progrès et de la promotion des savoirs, Paris: Gallimard, 1991), xxii: ‘Bacon thinks that, for progress to take place, it is necessary to distinguish between what is valid and what is not…His idea of progress entails the preliminary sifting of the past’s intellectual output as well as acts of elimination. Before moving forward, one must first be put on the right track. The same idea was taken up by Kant in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason’ (my translation).

    2 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2002 [1996]), 174. All subsequent references to the Advancement of Learning will be to this edition of the text.

    3 On the relative novelty of such a division, see Marta Fattori, ‘La phantasia dans la classification des sciences,’ in Études sur Francis Bacon (Paris: PUF, Épiméthée, 2012).

    4 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 175.

    5 See Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie (London, James Roberts, 1595), n.p.

    6 See Michèle Le Doeuff, Du progrès et de la promotion des savoirs, xxx: ‘it has sometimes been argued – quite erroneously – that The Advancement of Learning is about classifying sciences. But Bacon never uses the term classification, preferring words like division, partition or distribution instead, which makes a considerable difference.’ (my translation)

    7 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 189.

    8 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 205.

    9 The reference is to John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, ed., The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works, 2nd edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

    10 Guido Giglioni, Dana Jalobeanu and Sorana Corneanu, ed., Francis Bacon and the Reconfiguration of Early Modern Natural History, special issue of Early Science and Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

    11 See Howard Marchitello, ‘Science Studies and English Renaissance Literature,’ Literature Compass 3, no 3 (2006): 341–65 and The Machine in the Text, Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011); Elizabeth Spiller, Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature: the Art of Making Knowledge, 1589–1670 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007); Carla Mazzio, ‘Shakespeare and Science,’ special double issue of the Johns Hopkins Journal, South Central Review (Winter and Spring 2009): 1–23; Sophie Chiari and Mickaël Popelard, Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Ayesha Ramachandran, The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015).

    12 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    13 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 236.

    14 See Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 531; and The Oxford Francis Bacon. Early Writings 1584–1596, ed. Alan Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 584–5.

    15 On the Inns of court and the cultural activities that took place there, see Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight, The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

    16 Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 532.

    17 Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 587.

    18 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 597–8.

    19 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 598.

    20 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 599.

    21 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 599.

    22 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 598–9

    23 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum in The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI, ed. Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 65.

    24 See Antonio Perez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

    25 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    26 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    27 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 183.

    28 Here, and in what follows, I take ‘functional’ in the sense of ‘able to fulfil a specific function or perform a designated role; working or operative’ (OED, 4c), which points to the operative aim of Bacon’s plan for the reform of science.

    29 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 179.

    30 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 180.

    31 Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, n.p.

    32 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 186.

    33 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 186.

    34 On this aspect of Bacon’s thinking, see Guido Giglioni, ‘Cupido, sive Atomus; Dionysus, sive Cupiditas: Francis Bacon on Desire,’ in Francis Bacon on Motion and Power, ed. Guido Giglioni, Sorana Corneanu, Dana Jalobeanu and James Lancaster (Berlin: Springer, 2016), especially 157–59.

    35 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 187.

    36 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in Three Early Modern Utopias, ed. Susan Bruce (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), 151.

    37 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI, 215.

    38 I am of course very much indebted to the seminal work of Dana Jalobeanu, Guido Giglioni and Sorana Corneanu, and especially to the holistic view they take of Bacon’s philosophy. For a discussion of the place of natural history in Bacon’s philosophy and how poetry, natural history and natural philosophy should be construed as ‘converging, or overlapping, rather than discrete disciplines’, see in particular Guido Giglioni, Dana Jalobeanu and Sorana Corneanu, Francis Bacon and the Reconfiguration of Early Modern Natural History, special issue of Early Science and Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2012). As Guido Giglioni makes clear in his article page 8, ‘the interplay of historia and fabula in Bacon’s philosophy demonstrates that the parallelism between the globus intellectus and the globus materialis applies both in a diachronic sense (regarding the progress from myth to reality), and in a synchronic one (with respect to the relationship between the human faculties of memory, imagination and reason).’

    39 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis in The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers, 480.

    40 See Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 532. The counsellor’s suggestion that the prince should build a library, a garden, a cabinet and a stillhouse seems to have been fully accepted by the Bensalemites.

    41 Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 238.

    42 Bacon’s notion of ‘broken knowledge’ should also probably be set in the context of the early modern period’s sustained interest in the miscellany. As Angus Vine compellingly argues in his recent book on the subject, the miscellany was more than a mere aide-mémoire or a kind of external memory. It also generated new knowledge in its own right and was ‘essential to the early modern organization of knowledge’. See Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order: Manuscript Culture and the Early Modern Organization of Knowledge (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018), 12 and the chapter on Bacon (‘Bacon’s filing,’ 191–224).

    43 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 235.

    44 Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon. Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 174.

    45 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 233.

    46 See Simon Wortham, ‘Censorship and the institution of knowledge in Bacon’s New Atlantis,’ in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. New Interdisciplinary essays, ed. Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 180–98; and Denise Albanese, ‘The New Atlantis and the Uses of Utopia,’ ELH 57, no 3 (Autumn 1990): 503–28.

    47 See Novum Organum, ‘Preface’ in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. John M. Robertson, reprinted from the texts and translations, with the notes and prefaces of Ellis & Spedding (New York: Routledge, 2011), 258.

    48 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 234.

    49 Bacon, New Atlantis, 472.

    50 Pierre Macherey, De l’utopie! (Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze: De l'incidence éditeur, 2019 [2011]), 219–20 (my translation).

    51 Bacon, New Atlantis, 486.

    52 Sarah Hutton, ‘Persuasions to science: Baconian rhetoric and the New Atlantis,’ in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. New interdisciplinary essays, ed. Bronwen Price, 56–7.

    53 Quoted by Hutton, ‘Persuasions to science: Baconian rhetoric and the New Atlantis,’ 56.

    54 Bacon, New Atlantis, 488.

    55 I am very grateful to Sorana Corneanu for this idea and her suggestion to pay more attention to Renaissance rhetoric.

    56 Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, n.p.

    57 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 205.

    58 As argued by Michel Malherbe, La philosophie de Francis Bacon (Paris: Vrin, 2011), 154.

    59 Francis Bacon, Cogitata et visa, in The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. III, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longmans & Co., 1876), 594: [aphorisms] ‘stimulate men’s minds and thoughts into judging and inventing.’

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    1 As Michèle Le Dœuff explains in the preface to her translation of Bacon’s The Advancement (Du progrès et de la promotion des savoirs, Paris: Gallimard, 1991), xxii: ‘Bacon thinks that, for progress to take place, it is necessary to distinguish between what is valid and what is not…His idea of progress entails the preliminary sifting of the past’s intellectual output as well as acts of elimination. Before moving forward, one must first be put on the right track. The same idea was taken up by Kant in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason’ (my translation).

    2 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2002 [1996]), 174. All subsequent references to the Advancement of Learning will be to this edition of the text.

    3 On the relative novelty of such a division, see Marta Fattori, ‘La phantasia dans la classification des sciences,’ in Études sur Francis Bacon (Paris: PUF, Épiméthée, 2012).

    4 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 175.

    5 See Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie (London, James Roberts, 1595), n.p.

    6 See Michèle Le Doeuff, Du progrès et de la promotion des savoirs, xxx: ‘it has sometimes been argued – quite erroneously – that The Advancement of Learning is about classifying sciences. But Bacon never uses the term classification, preferring words like division, partition or distribution instead, which makes a considerable difference.’ (my translation)

    7 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 189.

    8 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 205.

    9 The reference is to John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, ed., The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works, 2nd edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

    10 Guido Giglioni, Dana Jalobeanu and Sorana Corneanu, ed., Francis Bacon and the Reconfiguration of Early Modern Natural History, special issue of Early Science and Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

    11 See Howard Marchitello, ‘Science Studies and English Renaissance Literature,’ Literature Compass 3, no 3 (2006): 341–65 and The Machine in the Text, Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011); Elizabeth Spiller, Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature: the Art of Making Knowledge, 1589–1670 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007); Carla Mazzio, ‘Shakespeare and Science,’ special double issue of the Johns Hopkins Journal, South Central Review (Winter and Spring 2009): 1–23; Sophie Chiari and Mickaël Popelard, Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Ayesha Ramachandran, The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015).

    12 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    13 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 236.

    14 See Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 531; and The Oxford Francis Bacon. Early Writings 1584–1596, ed. Alan Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 584–5.

    15 On the Inns of court and the cultural activities that took place there, see Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight, The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

    16 Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 532.

    17 Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 587.

    18 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 597–8.

    19 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 598.

    20 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 599.

    21 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 599.

    22 ‘Orations’ in Stewart, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 598–9

    23 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum in The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI, ed. Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 65.

    24 See Antonio Perez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

    25 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    26 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 243.

    27 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 183.

    28 Here, and in what follows, I take ‘functional’ in the sense of ‘able to fulfil a specific function or perform a designated role; working or operative’ (OED, 4c), which points to the operative aim of Bacon’s plan for the reform of science.

    29 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 179.

    30 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 180.

    31 Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, n.p.

    32 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 186.

    33 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 186.

    34 On this aspect of Bacon’s thinking, see Guido Giglioni, ‘Cupido, sive Atomus; Dionysus, sive Cupiditas: Francis Bacon on Desire,’ in Francis Bacon on Motion and Power, ed. Guido Giglioni, Sorana Corneanu, Dana Jalobeanu and James Lancaster (Berlin: Springer, 2016), especially 157–59.

    35 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 187.

    36 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in Three Early Modern Utopias, ed. Susan Bruce (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), 151.

    37 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI, 215.

    38 I am of course very much indebted to the seminal work of Dana Jalobeanu, Guido Giglioni and Sorana Corneanu, and especially to the holistic view they take of Bacon’s philosophy. For a discussion of the place of natural history in Bacon’s philosophy and how poetry, natural history and natural philosophy should be construed as ‘converging, or overlapping, rather than discrete disciplines’, see in particular Guido Giglioni, Dana Jalobeanu and Sorana Corneanu, Francis Bacon and the Reconfiguration of Early Modern Natural History, special issue of Early Science and Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2012). As Guido Giglioni makes clear in his article page 8, ‘the interplay of historia and fabula in Bacon’s philosophy demonstrates that the parallelism between the globus intellectus and the globus materialis applies both in a diachronic sense (regarding the progress from myth to reality), and in a synchronic one (with respect to the relationship between the human faculties of memory, imagination and reason).’

    39 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis in The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers, 480.

    40 See Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 532. The counsellor’s suggestion that the prince should build a library, a garden, a cabinet and a stillhouse seems to have been fully accepted by the Bensalemites.

    41 Vickers, Francis Bacon. The Major Works, 238.

    42 Bacon’s notion of ‘broken knowledge’ should also probably be set in the context of the early modern period’s sustained interest in the miscellany. As Angus Vine compellingly argues in his recent book on the subject, the miscellany was more than a mere aide-mémoire or a kind of external memory. It also generated new knowledge in its own right and was ‘essential to the early modern organization of knowledge’. See Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order: Manuscript Culture and the Early Modern Organization of Knowledge (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018), 12 and the chapter on Bacon (‘Bacon’s filing,’ 191–224).

    43 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 235.

    44 Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon. Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 174.

    45 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 233.

    46 See Simon Wortham, ‘Censorship and the institution of knowledge in Bacon’s New Atlantis,’ in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. New Interdisciplinary essays, ed. Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 180–98; and Denise Albanese, ‘The New Atlantis and the Uses of Utopia,’ ELH 57, no 3 (Autumn 1990): 503–28.

    47 See Novum Organum, ‘Preface’ in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. John M. Robertson, reprinted from the texts and translations, with the notes and prefaces of Ellis & Spedding (New York: Routledge, 2011), 258.

    48 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 234.

    49 Bacon, New Atlantis, 472.

    50 Pierre Macherey, De l’utopie! (Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze: De l'incidence éditeur, 2019 [2011]), 219–20 (my translation).

    51 Bacon, New Atlantis, 486.

    52 Sarah Hutton, ‘Persuasions to science: Baconian rhetoric and the New Atlantis,’ in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. New interdisciplinary essays, ed. Bronwen Price, 56–7.

    53 Quoted by Hutton, ‘Persuasions to science: Baconian rhetoric and the New Atlantis,’ 56.

    54 Bacon, New Atlantis, 488.

    55 I am very grateful to Sorana Corneanu for this idea and her suggestion to pay more attention to Renaissance rhetoric.

    56 Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, n.p.

    57 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 205.

    58 As argued by Michel Malherbe, La philosophie de Francis Bacon (Paris: Vrin, 2011), 154.

    59 Francis Bacon, Cogitata et visa, in The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. III, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longmans & Co., 1876), 594: [aphorisms] ‘stimulate men’s minds and thoughts into judging and inventing.’

    Ordering Knowledge

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    Ordering Knowledge

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    Popelard, M. (2023). Bacon’s Literary Quest for Scientific Knowledge in Gesta Grayorum (1594) and New Atlantis (1627). In J.-J. Chardin, S. Corneanu, & R. Somerset (éds.), Ordering Knowledge. Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pus.32730
    Popelard, Mickaël. « Bacon’s Literary Quest for Scientific Knowledge in Gesta Grayorum (1594) and New Atlantis (1627) ». In Ordering Knowledge, édité par Jean-Jacques Chardin, Sorana Corneanu, et Richard Somerset. Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023. doi:10.4000/books.pus.32730.
    Popelard, Mickaël. « Bacon’s Literary Quest for Scientific Knowledge in Gesta Grayorum (1594) and New Atlantis (1627) ». Ordering Knowledge, édité par Jean-Jacques Chardin et al., Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pus.32730.

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    Chardin, J.-J., Corneanu, S., & Somerset, R. (éds.). (2023). Ordering Knowledge. Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pus.32660
    Chardin, Jean-Jacques, Sorana Corneanu, et Richard Somerset, éd. Ordering Knowledge. Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023. doi:10.4000/books.pus.32660.
    Chardin, Jean-Jacques, et al., éditeurs. Ordering Knowledge. Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pus.32660.
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