Francis Bacon #2: (His Teaching)

The transcription discusses the importance of returning to the Mosaic Covenant as a means of national salvation. It explores the ideas of Francis Bacon and his rejection of deductive logic in favor of inductive inference based on raw evidence. Bacon's scientific method is explained, highlighting the reliance on observation and statistical comparison. The transcription also mentions the limitations and biases of experiments. It emphasizes the need for the Bible as a source of first principles in all realms of existence, including science. The transcription discusses Bacon's vision of science as a savior and the role of a scientific elite in governing society. It mentions Bacon's influence on the Royal Society and his belief in the progress of science to overcome human conditions. Bacon's dualistic separation of arts and sciences from religion is also mentioned. The transcription concludes by encouraging listeners to visit the website and support scholarships for low-income students. Welcome, everybody, to GreatBibleReset.com, which refers to the great need of the hour, which is a return to the ordinances of the Mosaic Covenant in Exodus 20-24 as our only hope of national salvation. As Cecil B. DeMille, director of the Ten Commandments, once noted, quote, is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law. Now Francis Bacon believed that the ancient Greeks used logic and forms to corrupt truth. He recoiled from the deductive model of the medieval schoolmen and their deferential reliance on authority, especially in the realm of legal theory. Plato had sought truth in the ideal forms, while Aristotle had tried to reconcile form and matter. He was at the same time the alleged champion of deductive logic and inductive observation of nature. Copernicus had set the stage for skepticism of their earlier paradigm with his rejection of the theory that the sun and universe revolve around the earth. Bacon rebuilt on what Copernicus had demolished, the title for his new Organon, derived from Aristotle's Organon, a treatise on deductive logic, quote, where Aristotle's inferential system based on syllogisms could reliably derive conclusions which were logically consistent with an argument's premises, Bacon's system was designed to investigate the fundamental premises themselves. Bacon proposed an inductive inference based upon a return to the raw evidence of the natural world, end of quote. Now this is the epitome of natural law, in which propositional truth arises out of nature apart from revealed truth. Hence the term Rosicrucianism, in which the rose of secrecy veils the truth of Christ. Ultimately neither deductive nor inductive reasoning apart from God's revelation is a reliable source of knowledge. Remember as a general rule, we may reason dependently in the Bible that we may not reason independently of the Bible. Bacon concluded of Aristotle that, quote, he utterly enslaved his natural philosophy to his logic and made it a matter of disputation and almost useless. And no one should be impressed because in his books on animals and in his problems and other treatises, there is often discussion of experiments. He had in fact made up his mind beforehand and did not properly consult experience. After making his decisions arbitrarily, he parades experience around distorted to suit his opinions a captive. Words and names also provide a snare for men believe that their reason controls words, but it is also true that words retort and turn their force back upon the understanding and this has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistic and unproductive. End of quote. So much for the poor authority of philosophies founded on common notions or few experiments or superstition. Now an example of this would be the simple renaming of the US Department of War to Department of Defense at the suggestion of public relations pioneer Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud. That simple name change provides psychological cover for a so-called defensive organization that provokes war all over the world. Thus Bacon exposes the weakness of human deduction, but his scientific inductive system is no less subject to error. Most of us are familiar with the essential elements of the inductive scientific method that Bacon pioneered. Induction involves an examination of particular things to arrive at generalizations based on patterns in the data. Induction may involve nothing more than simple observation. Bacon did not invent the inductive method nor did he perfect it, but he systematized and applied it to the practice of science in a form that led ultimately to what is now known as the scientific method. For any particular study there will be a control group that remains constant. In addition there are one or more experimental groups to which an outside influence is applied. The control group and the experimental group are then compared statistically to measure what changes, if any, have occurred in the experimental groups. If a particular conclusion is confirmed in repeated testing over a long period of time it may assume the stature of a scientific law. But in practice experiments are rarely replicable. Measurements are imprecise. Rounding errors multiply geometrically. Everything is biased. Is the glass half full or half empty? The design may be faulty and much more. So Bacon draws a sharp distinction between anticipation of the mind, as he put it, and interpretation of nature. In the Introduction to New Organon, Bacon explained his rationale for rejecting past approaches based on anticipation of the mind in their entirety and proceeding on the basis of an inductive interpretation of nature. There was simply no hope, he said, that errors which have grown powerful with age and which are likely to remain powerful forever would, if the mind were left to itself, correct themselves of their own accord one by one, either from the native force of the understanding or with the help and assistance of logic. The reason is that the first notions of things which the mind accepts, keeps, and accumulates and which are the source of everything else, are faulty and confused and abstracted from things without care. The consequence is that the general human reason which we bring to bear on the inquiry into nature is not well founded and properly constructed. It is like a magnificent palace without a foundation. The only course remaining was to try the thing again from the start, with better means, and make a general renewal of the science and arts and all human learning beginning from correct foundations. The problem is there is no such thing as brute factuality or self-interpreting fact. We are dependent on the Bible for first principles of interpretation in every realm of existence, including especially science, which is based on creation. Jeremiah 51.15, for example, says, It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding he stretched out the heavens, thus seeming to confirm the idea of an expanding universe. He stretched out the heavens. Job 26.8 says, He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight. Here in Psalms we have the fundamentals of the hydrologic cycle. Francis Bacon stands as a transitional figure between the optimistic humanism of the later Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which ended with the bloody French Revolution. Very obviously, Bacon exalts science to the role of savior in New Atlantis and Novum Organum. In New Atlantis, an ideal commonwealth is controlled and guided with maximum efficiency by a scientific elite, a cadre of state scientists who rule from a palace of invention called Solomon's House, what we call today the Military-Industrial-Media Complex. Solomon's House was a great society of research and scientific investigation. This was Bacon's vision for the New World and America, whose colonization he promoted in Jamestown. To quote Bacon, the end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motion of all things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible. This fictional account led directly to Isaac Newton's Royal Society in the latter half of the 17th century. From the wilds of colonial America, Pastor Cotton Mather was eager to sign up, and was in fact granted membership. Bacon paints a picture of the future, governed by the inevitability of human progress by scientific endeavor and pursuit of truth. Science will find a way, no matter how great the obstacles, and mankind will advance to ever greater heights in his conquest of nature and the cosmos. Bacon's Rosicrucianism taught that base metals may be transmuted into gold by repeated alchemical experiments. Although not a great scientist himself, Bacon served as philosopher and prophet of the scientific revolution, pointing ahead to Comte and Dewey. Science that was held would eliminate poverty, disease, and all other maladies of the human condition. God and religion were incidental, although Bacon cannot ignore his Puritan heritage entirely. But even in this, he sets up a platonic dualism between form, innate, and matter. In spite of his rejection of Plato, man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over creation, said Bacon. Both of these losses, however, can, even in this life, be in some parts repaired. The former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences. And note the dualistic separation of the arts and sciences from religion and faith. With Bacon, the emphasis has shifted from the salvation of man's soul to the conquest of man's material environment via science and technology. So thank you for sticking with me today. Be sure to visit us at greatbiblereset.com and patronize our sponsors. Remember that 15% of your purchases go to fund scholarships for low-income students.