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    Science: Empire of science

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    Bacon distinguishes three “grades of ambition in mankind.”  First, there is the ambition to exert power over one’s native country, but this is  a “vulgar and degenerate” ambition.  More dignity is evident in “those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among men,” though along with dignity there is of course “covetousness.”  The most noble ambition, however, is “to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe,” a “more wholesome and more noble thing than the other two.”  This is the work of art and science.

    Bacon is picking up on the biblical theme of dominion in the last of these ambitions, but he links this with an optimism about human uses of power that is not biblical at all: “Only let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest, and let power be given it: the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion.”  Apparently, the sheer fact of dominion will overcome original sin with the light of reason and religion.  Such is the pure empire of science.

    posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 8:59 am