1. EMPIRICISM AND CRITIQUE OF
LANGUAGE IN FRANCIS BACON
The problem of language is, we know, not a primary
problem for Bacon, but is part of the more general
subject of a reform of scientific method. Despite this,
the Baconian encyclopedia of the sciences surely con
stitutes, even on the level of linguistic reflection, the
best review of the linguistic problems transmitted by
tradition and the best point of departure for their
discussion in the seventeenth century. In fact, besides
an inventory of the traditional linguistic problems, the
English seventeenth century inherited from Bacon that
kind of linguistic skepticism which will repeatedly call
for justification and reform of language, or outright
invention of language ex novo, to adapt it to the au-
thentic aims of communication. English thought seems
in short to find in the works of Bacon not only an
encyclopedia of the natural and human sciences, but
also a catalogue of the superstitions and prejudices
which obstruct the communication of knowledge.
A first aspect of this critique of language is to be
found in the examination Bacon makes of the arts of
communication, and in particular of the traditional
dialectics, inadequate and incompetent before the ob-
scurity and profundity of nature, which escapes its
grasp—whereas induction stimulates sense, imposes
itself upon nature, and almost identifies itself with
nature's works (cogitata et visa [1607-09], Instauratio
magna [1620], in Works, ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis,
D. D. Heath, London [1857-59], III, 606-08; Novum
organum [1620], De augmentis scientiarum [1623];
Works, I, 135-39, 151-54, 161, 614ff.). Nevertheless
dialectics still has a function, not however in respect
of the increase of knowledge but only of its trans-
mission. And it retains a privileged place in rhetoric,
thanks to its objectivity, to its power to appeal to the
intellect without the intervention of fancy or imagina-
tion. But its objectivity is not, all the same, the objec-
tivity of science. The true discourse of science is not
reasoning but experiment: to communicate scientific
knowledge means to exhibit the operations of science.
The ultimate objectivity of scientific discourse is given
not by its incontrovertibility on the plane of argument
but by its conformity to the facts, which is not rational
evidence but sensible evidence, the possibility of re-
peated experimental verification.
From this arises the second aspect of the Baconian
critique of language. Precisely because reasoning is no
longer endowed with self-evidence and demonstrative
rigor, the need arises of delivering scientific method
from the looseness and uncertainty of the common
language, in which errors and prejudices are deeply
imbedded. These prejudices and errors are a class of
the idols or false images of things which vitiate the
operations of science, and are among the most trouble-
some and most dangerous since they are implicit in
the very conferring of names: in the very learning of
their mother tongue children are forced to swallow
this infoelicem errorum cabala (cogitata et visa and
Advancement of Learning [1605], Works, III, 396-97,
599;
Novum organum and
De augmentis scientiarum,
Works, I, 164, 170-72, 645-46).
The linguistic skepticism implicit in the doctrine of
the idola fori is confirmed by Bacon's occasional refer-
ence to the ideal of Adamic language (whose names
are endowed with immediate congruency with the
nature of things) as mythical limit of human language,
always conditioned by the nature of the human intel-
lect and reflecting distortedly the images of things
(Instauratio magna and De augmentis scientiarum,
Works, I, 132, 434, 465-66). The opposing of Adamic
language to conventional human language—a tradi-
tional theme, beginning with patristic philosophy
—assumes in Bacon the value of a hypostasis of op-
position between the immaculate science of the first
days and human science since the Fall, between the
natural language of the first human knowledge and the
conventional language of recovered science. One might
in fact apply to Bacon the observation Basil Willey
makes (The Seventeenth Century Background, London
[1934], p. 174) touching Glanvill: the figure of Adam
becomes a sort of “wish-fulfillment” of the philosopher,
conscious of the limits of human science and language.
The conformity of word to thing, which scientific
communication must at any rate aim at, will therefore
never be the immediate congruency of the Adamic
naming. It will be rather a pragmatic conformity, so
to speak, the fruit of true induction, that is of the new
method of the interpretation of nature. Helpful in this
will be the science of grammar, and in particular phil-
osophical grammar, which has the double task of sub-
jecting current linguistic usage to analysis and of
studying the influence the “genius,” that is to say the
character, of different peoples has upon their respec-
tive languages (De augmentis scientiarum, Works, I,
476a, 654).
Since it is in the last analysis the trustworthiness of
sensory intuition that guarantees semantic congruity,
this congruity becomes the more precarious and com-
promised the more words depart from sensory evi-
dence. Hence the linguistic value attributed to gesture,
emblem, symbol, hieroglyph, all immediately endowed
with sensible analogy to the thing or idea they signify,
and all signifying without recourse to the mediation
of words. The mediation of imagination also guarantees
the sensible evidence of metaphor, which is not there-
fore merely an embellishment of discourse, but has an
essential function as an instrument of communication.
