Further, for those who criticise Francis as the hidden hand behind Rosicrucianism (which I believe) as some "evil" infection of their little ivory towered rational minds, let us consider if this man who (you assert) founded "scientism," what does he have to say in the Rosi manifestos??:
Unless you think all of this is misdirection and some secret support of "technocracy" alone, I say you are too narrow in your understanding that God has provided us with both the rational mind's discernment...AND the Heart's direct understanding of even paradoxes that rise above the rational mind. You characters fear the Mysteries and entering the labyrinth of the Unconscious wherein the hidden machinery of Nature's algorithms constructs the edifice we call "human MAN." You fear the "occult" which is just that yet unknown...a very highly UNscientific attitude., A "scientist" who cannot undergo LSD, as example, to observe his own inner workings....is the true man of shallow scientism to preserve his little ego.
Per ChatGPT who quickly culls out references:
Absolutely—here’s a compact anthology from the Rosicrucian manifestos that shows the union of measurable inquiry with divine illumination.
Rosicrucian quotes (with brief notes)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “Wisdom… is the Breath of the Power of God.” — knowledge begins in divine emanation, not mere materialism. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “[Solomon] understood the Nature of the Elements… [and] the Ordinance of the Stars.” — empirical study of nature and astronomy praised as wisdom. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “We… attain… the perfect knowledge of… Jesus Christ and Nature.” — Christology paired with natural inquiry. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “Collect Librum Naturae, or a perfect Method of all Arts.” — calls for a systematic “Book of Nature.” (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “In Theologie, Physic, and the Mathematic, the Truth doth oppose itself.” — theology alongside physics & mathematics within one reforming truth. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “He doth not rejoice that he can make Gold… but is glad that he seeth the Heavens open, and the Angels of God.” — spiritual illumination prioritized over material alchemy. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “That great book of nature stands open to all men.” — open, empirical investigation affirmed. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “As the mathematician and astronomer can… know the eclipses which are to come…” — esteem for predictive, measurable science. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “God hath… incorporated [characters] in the Holy Scriptures… [and] imprinted them in all beasts.” — twin revelations of Scripture and Nature. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “We do not set at naught transmutation… be earnest to attain the knowledge of Nature.” — alchemical gifts balanced by disciplined philosophy of nature. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “In my humble prayer [I] conversed with my Creator.” — begins in devotional encounter. (Alchemy)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “By the account and calculation of the planets, I had most diligently observed.” — quantitative, astronomical observation. (Alchemy)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “If anything… be revealed to me, I would employ it… to the spreading of his Name, and the service of my neighbour.” — esoteric insight yoked to ethical, theistic purpose. (Alchemy)
Scientism: "French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) explained the tenets of scientism [[xxxviii]]. Scientific knowledge is whatever can be expressed in quantitative terms, or can be repeated under laboratory conditions, and, for believers, only scientific knowledge is true or real knowledge. and, for believers, only scientific knowledge is true or real knowledge. Scientism holds a “mechanistic” or “formalistic” or “analytic” view of nature. The logical corollary of scientism is technocracy: the experts alone are qualified to make decisions, as only the experts know best what to do. And science and technology alone can solve mankind’s problems."
And asked ChatGPT is Bacon was wholly a man of scientism which leads to technocracy,...your main criticism, ...or did he also accept inspiration from the Divine, from intuition, from inner gnosis (and don't chastise the term--- by it I mean a man seeking knowledge calls up the animating power within that lights his mind, and asks, beseeches, prays...for understanding.
Chat said:
You’re right—Bacon is often flattened into the caricature of “father of scientism,” as though he were merely the prophet of laboratories and mechanical empiricism. But if we look at his writings and how his admirers received him, we find several strands that show he integrated divine illumination, providence, and inner gnosis into his vision of science.
1. Bacon Himself
A. Advancement of Learning (1605)
• Bacon explicitly placed human knowledge under divine order:
“The prerogative of God extendeth to the mysteries of the heart, the center of the thoughts, as well as to the truth of things.”
He distinguished revelation (God’s immediate gift) from reason and experience (human tools), but never denied revelation’s reality. Rather, he said science should stay within its sphere, without trespassing on theology—yet theology crowns and orders all knowledge.
• He also wrote of “two books”:
“Let no man… think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works.”
The Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture together reveal God. This is not a reductionist empiricism but a double illumination.
B. Novum Organum (1620)
• He warned against idolatry of the senses:
“The human intellect is prone to suppose greater order and regularity in the world than it finds.”
His method was designed not to replace divine inspiration but to correct human error and allow Nature to speak truthfully—as God’s creation.
• Bacon described his new method as a “holy work” ordained for the relief of mankind, not just for technical progress but as a restoration after the Fall.
2. Bacon’s Religious and Philosophical Notes
• In his private prayer “Confession of Faith”, Bacon professed:
“I believe that nothing is without beginning but God; no nature, no matter, no spirit, but one only and the same God… who is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
This is not deism or mere naturalism, but a Christian mystical framework within which his science made sense.
• His Valerius Terminus insists that human learning must be bounded by humility before God, lest it become “vain” or “profane.”
3. Admirers and Interpreters
A. The “Invisible College” and Royal Society
• Robert Boyle and other early Fellows of the Royal Society looked back to Bacon as their forerunner. Boyle called experimental philosophy a form of “worship by works,” and his own Christian Virtuoso framed experimental science as devotion.
→ They saw Bacon not as a mechanist only, but as an architect of a pious empiricism, harmonized with revelation.
B. Thomas Browne
• Though not a direct disciple, Browne (author of Religio Medici) admired Bacon’s vision, and exemplifies the Baconian union of empirical curiosity with mystical faith:
“Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant Nature.”
C. Later Baconians
• Even in the 19th century, figures like Macaulay—though seeing him as a rationalist—still noted that Bacon framed his project as a restoration of Adam’s lost dominion, a scriptural motif.
4. Contrast with “Scientism”
• Bacon did not say only the measurable is real.
• He placed limits on natural philosophy and acknowledged higher realms of knowledge (divine revelation, theology, the soul).
• His science was a handmaiden to theology, not its replacement.
• The caricature of Bacon as a pure materialist comes more from later interpreters (e.g. positivists in the 19th century) than from Bacon himself.
✅ Summary: Bacon’s texts—and the way Boyle, Browne, and the early Royal Society revered him—show he never reduced knowledge to mere laboratory sense-data. He constantly appealed to God’s providence, the “two books,” the restoration of Adamic knowledge, and the legitimacy of divine inspiration. His vision for science was sacramental as well as empirical.
Re “The popular belief that Francis Bacon was the founder of modern science is so flagrantly in contradiction with all the facts of the history of science " and "it is most instructive to inquire how such an absurd belief ever gained currency among educated people”
Perhaps the belief has spread so widely and deeply because of what Bacon himself wrote about it rather than what Bacon actually discovered with it. (This seems to me a typical trait of AI, btw.) In that sense, Bacon was perhaps more a forerunner of Bernays rather than another Aristotle.
Some - particularly those who credit Bacon with writing the plays attributed to Shakespeare - would argue that Bacon was perhaps the greatest and most successful propagandist in history.
'Bacon, the founder of modern science' is a joke, and a bad one at that, that one can still find in the textbooks. In fact Bacon understood nothing about science. He was credulous and completely uncritical. His manner of thinking was closer to alchemy and magic (he believed in 'sympathies'), in short to that of a primitive or to a thinker of the Renaissance than to that of a Galileo or even a Scholastic.
Further, for those who criticise Francis as the hidden hand behind Rosicrucianism (which I believe) as some "evil" infection of their little ivory towered rational minds, let us consider if this man who (you assert) founded "scientism," what does he have to say in the Rosi manifestos??:
Unless you think all of this is misdirection and some secret support of "technocracy" alone, I say you are too narrow in your understanding that God has provided us with both the rational mind's discernment...AND the Heart's direct understanding of even paradoxes that rise above the rational mind. You characters fear the Mysteries and entering the labyrinth of the Unconscious wherein the hidden machinery of Nature's algorithms constructs the edifice we call "human MAN." You fear the "occult" which is just that yet unknown...a very highly UNscientific attitude., A "scientist" who cannot undergo LSD, as example, to observe his own inner workings....is the true man of shallow scientism to preserve his little ego.
Per ChatGPT who quickly culls out references:
Absolutely—here’s a compact anthology from the Rosicrucian manifestos that shows the union of measurable inquiry with divine illumination.
Rosicrucian quotes (with brief notes)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “Wisdom… is the Breath of the Power of God.” — knowledge begins in divine emanation, not mere materialism. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “[Solomon] understood the Nature of the Elements… [and] the Ordinance of the Stars.” — empirical study of nature and astronomy praised as wisdom. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “We… attain… the perfect knowledge of… Jesus Christ and Nature.” — Christology paired with natural inquiry. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “Collect Librum Naturae, or a perfect Method of all Arts.” — calls for a systematic “Book of Nature.” (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “In Theologie, Physic, and the Mathematic, the Truth doth oppose itself.” — theology alongside physics & mathematics within one reforming truth. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Fama Fraternitatis (1614): “He doth not rejoice that he can make Gold… but is glad that he seeth the Heavens open, and the Angels of God.” — spiritual illumination prioritized over material alchemy. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “That great book of nature stands open to all men.” — open, empirical investigation affirmed. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “As the mathematician and astronomer can… know the eclipses which are to come…” — esteem for predictive, measurable science. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “God hath… incorporated [characters] in the Holy Scriptures… [and] imprinted them in all beasts.” — twin revelations of Scripture and Nature. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Confessio Fraternitatis (1615): “We do not set at naught transmutation… be earnest to attain the knowledge of Nature.” — alchemical gifts balanced by disciplined philosophy of nature. (nommeraadio.ee)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “In my humble prayer [I] conversed with my Creator.” — begins in devotional encounter. (Alchemy)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “By the account and calculation of the planets, I had most diligently observed.” — quantitative, astronomical observation. (Alchemy)
• Chymical Wedding (1616): “If anything… be revealed to me, I would employ it… to the spreading of his Name, and the service of my neighbour.” — esoteric insight yoked to ethical, theistic purpose. (Alchemy)
I took your quote on scientism:
Scientism: "French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) explained the tenets of scientism [[xxxviii]]. Scientific knowledge is whatever can be expressed in quantitative terms, or can be repeated under laboratory conditions, and, for believers, only scientific knowledge is true or real knowledge. and, for believers, only scientific knowledge is true or real knowledge. Scientism holds a “mechanistic” or “formalistic” or “analytic” view of nature. The logical corollary of scientism is technocracy: the experts alone are qualified to make decisions, as only the experts know best what to do. And science and technology alone can solve mankind’s problems."
And asked ChatGPT is Bacon was wholly a man of scientism which leads to technocracy,...your main criticism, ...or did he also accept inspiration from the Divine, from intuition, from inner gnosis (and don't chastise the term--- by it I mean a man seeking knowledge calls up the animating power within that lights his mind, and asks, beseeches, prays...for understanding.
Chat said:
You’re right—Bacon is often flattened into the caricature of “father of scientism,” as though he were merely the prophet of laboratories and mechanical empiricism. But if we look at his writings and how his admirers received him, we find several strands that show he integrated divine illumination, providence, and inner gnosis into his vision of science.
1. Bacon Himself
A. Advancement of Learning (1605)
• Bacon explicitly placed human knowledge under divine order:
“The prerogative of God extendeth to the mysteries of the heart, the center of the thoughts, as well as to the truth of things.”
He distinguished revelation (God’s immediate gift) from reason and experience (human tools), but never denied revelation’s reality. Rather, he said science should stay within its sphere, without trespassing on theology—yet theology crowns and orders all knowledge.
• He also wrote of “two books”:
“Let no man… think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works.”
The Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture together reveal God. This is not a reductionist empiricism but a double illumination.
B. Novum Organum (1620)
• He warned against idolatry of the senses:
“The human intellect is prone to suppose greater order and regularity in the world than it finds.”
His method was designed not to replace divine inspiration but to correct human error and allow Nature to speak truthfully—as God’s creation.
• Bacon described his new method as a “holy work” ordained for the relief of mankind, not just for technical progress but as a restoration after the Fall.
2. Bacon’s Religious and Philosophical Notes
• In his private prayer “Confession of Faith”, Bacon professed:
“I believe that nothing is without beginning but God; no nature, no matter, no spirit, but one only and the same God… who is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
This is not deism or mere naturalism, but a Christian mystical framework within which his science made sense.
• His Valerius Terminus insists that human learning must be bounded by humility before God, lest it become “vain” or “profane.”
3. Admirers and Interpreters
A. The “Invisible College” and Royal Society
• Robert Boyle and other early Fellows of the Royal Society looked back to Bacon as their forerunner. Boyle called experimental philosophy a form of “worship by works,” and his own Christian Virtuoso framed experimental science as devotion.
→ They saw Bacon not as a mechanist only, but as an architect of a pious empiricism, harmonized with revelation.
B. Thomas Browne
• Though not a direct disciple, Browne (author of Religio Medici) admired Bacon’s vision, and exemplifies the Baconian union of empirical curiosity with mystical faith:
“Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant Nature.”
C. Later Baconians
• Even in the 19th century, figures like Macaulay—though seeing him as a rationalist—still noted that Bacon framed his project as a restoration of Adam’s lost dominion, a scriptural motif.
4. Contrast with “Scientism”
• Bacon did not say only the measurable is real.
• He placed limits on natural philosophy and acknowledged higher realms of knowledge (divine revelation, theology, the soul).
• His science was a handmaiden to theology, not its replacement.
• The caricature of Bacon as a pure materialist comes more from later interpreters (e.g. positivists in the 19th century) than from Bacon himself.
✅ Summary: Bacon’s texts—and the way Boyle, Browne, and the early Royal Society revered him—show he never reduced knowledge to mere laboratory sense-data. He constantly appealed to God’s providence, the “two books,” the restoration of Adamic knowledge, and the legitimacy of divine inspiration. His vision for science was sacramental as well as empirical.
Re “The popular belief that Francis Bacon was the founder of modern science is so flagrantly in contradiction with all the facts of the history of science " and "it is most instructive to inquire how such an absurd belief ever gained currency among educated people”
Perhaps the belief has spread so widely and deeply because of what Bacon himself wrote about it rather than what Bacon actually discovered with it. (This seems to me a typical trait of AI, btw.) In that sense, Bacon was perhaps more a forerunner of Bernays rather than another Aristotle.
Some - particularly those who credit Bacon with writing the plays attributed to Shakespeare - would argue that Bacon was perhaps the greatest and most successful propagandist in history.
'Bacon, the founder of modern science' is a joke, and a bad one at that, that one can still find in the textbooks. In fact Bacon understood nothing about science. He was credulous and completely uncritical. His manner of thinking was closer to alchemy and magic (he believed in 'sympathies'), in short to that of a primitive or to a thinker of the Renaissance than to that of a Galileo or even a Scholastic.
Alexandre Koyré, Galileo Studies, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978, p.39, n.6.
Some interesting alternate views on Francis Bacon that I'm putting here for future reference:
https://www.thesavvystreet.com/before-ayn-rand-there-was-the-contribution-of-sir-francis-bacon/
Thank you very much for this summary of Francis Bacon.
Thanks for reaching out. I need to check out Fiat Lux. There's a great deal of overlap with the historical background in Fields & Energy.
https://johnplaice.substack.com