Miracles, preternatural facts, and laws of nature in Francis Bacon

MANZO SILVIA

Toronto

Conferencia; 2014 Conference of the International Society of Intellectual History. ?Intellectual Hinterlands?; 2014

International Society of Intellectual History.

This paper addresses the theological considerations lying behind Bacon?s account of exceptional phenomena in nature. I will argue that Bacon?s account of nature admits two kinds of exceptions to the laws of nature (or Baconian forms): divine miracles and preternatural phenomena. Besides, certain works of art, called miracles of art, might also be considered as alterations of the laws of nature. It is my contention that divine miracles, preternatural phenomena and miracles of art alter the laws of nature in different ways. This implies that the power by which God imposed laws on nature became limited after the fall of Adam both by the contumacy of matter and by the power of man as exerted in the greatest works of magic. The order of nature is thus neither steady nor adamantly inviolable, but reshaped not only by God?s miracles, but also by art and by the errors of nature.