IN THIS LESSON

Francis Bacon’s revolution wasn’t about solving the old puzzles of knowledge, but about changing the very rules of inquiry — turning epistemology outward, toward the world.

Topics discussed:

  • The Aristotelian worldview once made the world feel intelligible, but its central pieces began to collapse under new observations and conceptual pressures.

  • Around 1600, linguistic, technological, and cultural shifts gave rise to a new meaning of “experiment”: not trying something, but deliberately manipulating nature to reveal hidden causes.

  • Early experimentalists were seen as eccentric outliers whose strange new practices challenged tradition and authority.

  • Francis Bacon argued that knowledge begins with experience, requires purging our “idols,” and aims at prediction, control, and the relief of human suffering.

  • Bacon introduced ideas that anticipate empiricism, pragmatism, and positivism—each redefining what it means to know and what counts as meaningful inquiry.

  • Though powerful, Bacon’s model faces the challenge that predictive and explanatory success can still come from false theories (e.g., Ptolemy, alchemy).

  • The lesson closes by placing Bacon’s “knowledge is power” view beside Plato’s JTB theory, raising the question: What is knowledge, really?

Focus Questions

  • What is a worldview?

  • How might we argue that the Aristotelian worldview, with its geocentric framing of the cosmos, wasn’t merely superstition but a coherent system backed by the available data?

  • How did the rise of controlled experimentation change what philosophers and scientists meant by “knowing” something?

  • What does Bacon think prevents us from seeing the world clearly, and how do his “idols” relate to modern ideas about cognitive bias?

  • Why does Bacon mean when he argues that knowledge is fundamentally connected to power, prediction, and control?

  • Define the following: empiricism, pragmatism, positivism.

  • What is a potential objection to Bacon’s views on knowledge? If successful theories can still be false (like Ptolemy’s), does Bacon’s method guarantee knowledge exactly—or only usefulness?

  • Does Bacon’s approach offer a genuine escape from the regress argument, or does it simply shift the questions we ask about justification?

Reading List

Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness.

Lorraine Daston & Elizabeth Lunbeck, Histories of Scientific Observation.

Richard DeWitt, Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science.

Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.

Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club : A Story of Ideas in America.

Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science.

Phil Washburn, Philosophical Dilemmas: A Pro and Con Introduction to the Major Questions and Philosophers.

David Wootton, Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates.