The Theoretic Life - A Classical Ideal and its Modern Fate by Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul

Author:Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030022815
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

which Bacon describes as like…remoras to the ship, that hinder the sciences from holding on their course of improvement…3

Looking at the history of philosophy, Bacon sees in the new direction given to natural philosophy by Plato and especially Aristotle, a step backwards from the mechanistic approaches to philosophy of nature found in the mechanistic (i.e. pre-teleological) approaches of Democritus who saw in nature only matter in motion.4

Moreover, as Bacon argues in his Novum Organum, the attribution of purpose to nature carries with it the danger of anthropomorphizing the natural order. The farmer who thinks it is the purpose of rain to help fertilize his fields may be attributing his own purpose rather than discerning that of nature. Seeing nature through a human perspective without objectivity hinders the progress of knowledge since “…final causes... “are clearly more allied to man’s own nature, than the system of the universe, and from this source they have wonderfully corrupted philosophy.”5

It is important however to note that Bacon neither achieves (nor even attempts) a genuine philosophical refutation of final causality . On the contrary he merely removes it from the sphere of science he happens to be interested in and which he sees as fruitful for the technological project. While he thinks the idea of final causality has hindered the advancement of physical science, he concedes the real possibility in of teleology as a genuine metaphysical reality:These final causes, however, are not false, or unworthy of inquiry into metaphysics , but their excursion into the limits of physical causes hath made a great devastation in that province…6

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