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Finally we come to philosophy, whose divisions and classifications form the main
topic of The Advancement of Learning.
Philosophy falls into three divisions. The first is divine philosophy, which
others called natural theology, which Bacon treats perfunctorily. The other two
are natural philosophy, and human philosophy, which are defined at much greater
length. These three are the branches of a tree of which the trunk is first philosophy,
the discipline which others (but not Bacon) called metaphysics. Metaphysics, for
Bacon himself, is one part of speculative natural philosophy, the part which deals
with formal and final causes, while the other part, physics, deals with efficient and
material causes. Besides speculative natural philosophy, there is operative natural
philosophy, roughly speaking technology, which is further divided into mechanics
and magic; mechanics is the application to practice of physics, magic is the applica-
tion to practice of metaphysics.
Both the traditional Aristotelian terminology of the four causes and the pro-
vocative word ‘magic’ are misleading. Bacon’s natural magic, he tells us, is to be
sharply distinguished from the ‘credulous and superstitious conceits’ of alchemy
and astrology. Moreover, though it is the practical application of metaphysics,
natural magic makes no real use of final causes, and when Bacon speaks of ‘forms’
he tells us that he means laws: the form of heat or the form of light is the same
thing as the law of heat or the law of light.
To enquire the Form of a lion, of an oak, of gold, nay of water, of air, is a vain
pursuit: but to enquire the Forms of sense, of voluntary motion, of vegetation, of
colours, of gravity and levity, of density, of tenuity, of heat of cold, and all other
natures and qualities, which like an alphabet are not many, and which the essences
(upheld by matter) of all creatures do consist; to enquire I say the true forms of
these, is that part of Metaphysics which we now define.
The forms which are the alphabet of Bacon’s world are obscure characters in
comparison with the mathematical shapes and symbols of Galileo’s world alpha-
bet. It is a systematic weakness of Bacon’s philosophy of science that he under-
estimates mathematics: in his classification it appears as a mere appendix to natural
philosophy.
The other great division of philosophy, human philosophy, corresponds to
anatomy, psychology, and what would now be called the social sciences. Logic
and ethics appear as branches of psychology, in a reckless confusion between
normative disciplines and empirical sciences. Political theory is a part of civil
philosophy, that branch of philosophy which is concerned with the benefits which
humans derive from living in society.
In The Advancement of Learning Bacon observes that current logic is deficient
because it lacks a theory of scientific discovery.
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