Laws of nature and God in Francis Bacon

MANZO, SILVIA

Manchester

Congreso; 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine; 2013

International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science

Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy allows distinguishing two sorts of entities labeled “laws of nature”. On the one hand, Bacon talks of the “summary law of nature” that is a sole law of the highest generality.   The summary law of nature sometimes is identified with the “primary atomic motion”, while it is as well described as “the work which God worked from the beginning to the end”, or even as the “highest generality of motion”. On the other hand, Bacon refers to the “leges fundamentales et communes naturae” or “leges actus puri”. They are understood as general regularities and are identified with “forms” or formal causes.  Besides, Bacon distinguishes two “styles” of God’s work during the creation of the world: the “style of manufacture”, which represents his power; and the “style of law, decree or counsel”, which represents his wisdom. This “double emanation” of God’s creative action is particularly apparent in the description of the stages of nature as described in A Confession of Faith (1602), where Bacon defines nature as the constant and eternal laws imposed by God at the creation. These laws, we are told, have undergone three states:  i) the stage when the matter of heaven and earth existed without forms; ii) the stage when during the six days of creation all natural species were created; iii) the stage beginning with the Fall of Adam and including our own. The fourth and last stage is to take place at the end of the world. Whereas Bacon doubts that human mind could grasp the summary law of nature, he contends that forms or particular laws of nature are the subject matter of metaphysics, whose knowledge should be achieved by inductive method. As parts of natural philosophy, metaphysics along with physics are devoted to interpret the “book of nature” by which God manifests his power. The Bible, instead, is the book by which he reveals his will. Following the lead of the recent debate on voluntarism and the origins of early modern science (Harrison, 2002, 2009; Henry, 2009) this paper will explore the theological assumptions underlying Bacon’s characterization of laws of nature, in order to find out whether or not it is possible to ascribe to him a voluntarist or an intellectualist stance.