Reviews for Knowledge Is Power How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision Inspired Francis Baco...

The average rating for Knowledge Is Power How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision Inspired Francis Baco... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-12-22 00:00:00 Melissa Garrett I've finished The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind not long ago, where Grayling discusses the sometimes vexed question of the relationship between religion and the emergence of modern science, with particular attention given to heterodox religion, which he calls 'occultism'. Grayling's book is good-much more general than this one-but he is sometimes predictably skeptical when it comes to religion and dogmatic when it comes to science: I was after a divergent opinion, and that's very much what this book provides. Henry teaches history of science in Edinburgh, and argues, contra Grayling, that science and 'the occult' were inextricably related - in fact, that modern scientific experimentalism arises from natural magic. I put 'the occult' in scare-quotes because that's Grayling's term, too encompassing and vague to really do justice to this field and period, one which Henry duly avoids. The book is very short and intended for a popular audience, meaning we do not get into the details of Bacon's life, no in those of the period he lived in. Instead the focus is on a few sources which Henry take to be central in the formation of Bacon's thought, and which run somewhat against the grain of traditional (pre-60s, really) history of the scientific revolution as secularisation. None of those sources (personal devotion, milleniarism, utopianism, etc.) is really explored in any depth, although the author does offer us some choice extracts from the works of Bacon to illustrate them. The one source that gets more attention is 'natural magic', which Henry describes at some length, insisting that magic was, at least by the Renaissance, never concerned with the supernatural, but rather with achieving material ends by the combination of natural elements - on other words, magic was pre-modern instrumental science. It was a science however rooted in a specific worldview, the great chain of being, and assuming 'correspondances' between different realms, and 'signatures' within things material. This would be where Bacon got both his insistence on material improvement as the ultimate purpose of science, and examples of the experimental method which he proceeded to formalize. This is a credible account, although for example, Henry's claims as to Bacon's millenarian beliefs are largely undocumented. His description of late Renaissance magic is credibly supported by quotation, but I found, maybe because of the format, that he was overly keen on 'secularising' magic, much like, say, Grayling was keen to secularise science. At this point what I would like to find is an accessible book that focus on the religious views at play during the scientific revolution.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-03 00:00:00 Americo Castro This book had a few amazing nuggets of information. Prior to reading, I vaguely knew who Francis Bacon was - that he was considered the founder of the scientific method and that many atheist's believe he is one of their own. These concepts are only half true. First, Bacon didn't really create the scientific method. He borrowed it, rather surprisingly, from the magic tradition. He believed that the current natural philosophy being taught in universities across Europe was false because it came to its beliefs first and then tried to seek evidence for its claims. Bacon instead wanted to follow the magic tradition of searching for the natural properties of things and only then trying to forma coherent theory of their workings. Indeed, while Bacon did subscribe to a specific worldview, he never tried to promote this, instead believing that each individual should look at the evidence and draw their own conclusions, through rational investigation, rather than subscribing to any one dogma. Another interesting element was that he believed that advances in natural philosophy should be used for the good of humankind. Rather than the wispy knowledge of ancient philosophers or the nit-picking of logicians, Bacon understood that the natural world could be utilised to improve the lot of humankind. Overall, an interesting book. It seems like the image of Bacon has been corrupted. He was clearly a man of God and would have been shocked that science is often held up as a defender of atheism.