Feminist science critics, in particular Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller, claim that misogynous sexual metaphors played an important role in the rise of modern science. The writings of Francis Bacon have been singled out as an especially egregious instance of the use of misogynous metaphors in scientific philosophy. This paper offers a defense of Bacon.
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References
1.
See Bordo (1987,107-8); Longino (1988, 563;1990, 205); Nelson (1990, 213, 353 n. 136); Tuana (1990, 62)—all under the influence of Harding, Merchant, and Keller.
2.
I quote from Feyerabend because Harding (1991) gives, as the last sentence, "I think I do not have to explain my own preferences" (43). In her 1986 book, Harding quotes it correctly (120).
3.
Although Harding takes his metaphor as being about "science and its theories" (1986,121), and Feyerabend agrees (1970,229), it makes equal sense to read it as being about the nature of the reality that lies beyond science. We should not view Nature as a stem and demanding mistress, which it is for Popper and Lakatos: their Nature screams "False!" or "Incompatible!" when it does not like our scientific theories. Instead, Nature is an indulgent courtesan, one who lets us do whatever we want—in theory construction. It is Nature that whispers "Anything goes, big guy," not Science.
4.
For an overview of Bacon's life and philosophy, see Thomas Macaulay's 1837 essay on Bacon and John Robertson's critical reply (1905, vii-xvi).
5.
The two sentences are from Bacon's 1623 Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, Works IV, 296; hereafter, De Augmentis. Harding takes the passage not from Bacon but from Merchant (1980,168), who takes it from Works IV.
6.
Keller also argues (1978, 412-3, 429; 1985, 91) that the Baconian scientist is asexual; even though he dominates a female nature, the marriage they have is chaste, cold, distant, detached. This sits uneasily with Bacon's "conquest" of nature being forceful sexual seduction, let alone rape.
7.
Rossi suggests that Bacon, in "Erichthonius," expressed his view that to be successful with nature, science has to "humbly beg her assistance" (1968, 101; see also "humble respect," 105). Keller (1985, 37) quotes Rossi, but not this phrase, creating the impression that he agrees with her "forceful and aggressive seduction" reading.
8.
Harding quotes these two De Augmentis sentences three times in two books, always informing us that her source is Merchant's The Death of Nature (1980, 168). Merchant includes the five missing words. In addition to failing to mark an ellipsis in the first of Bacon's two sentences, Harding makes a second mistake in WS ? WK?: ellipsis points belong between the two sentences, since Harding omits a large chunk. Any hint of rape created by the juxtaposition of these sentences in WS?WK? is therefore artificial. There are other errors (cf. Works IV, 296). In Merchant, we correctly find "these holes," while in Harding, "those." Merchant and Harding write "whole object," but both are wrong, "sole object" is correct. Merchant, and Harding in SQIF, gives "drive her afterward," but both are wrong; in WS?WK?, Harding got "afterwards" right.
9.
See also Bordo's (1987) remark on this sentence from De Augmentis, apparently provoked by Keller and Merchant: it illustrates "the famous Baconian imagery of sexual assault" (107-8).
10.
Henceforth I supply for Novum Organum only the Book I aphorism number.
11.
This is reminiscent of Merchant on Bacon's experimentalism: "Here, in bold sexual imagery, is the key feature of the modem experimental method—constraint of nature in the laboratory" (1980, 171).
12.
Bacon is no blind optimist: he recognizes that science done poorly will go wrong. See, for example, "Daedalus" (Myth 19) in Wisdom of the Ancients (Robertson, 842-43).
13.
See my (1985), at 73-4.
14.
Similarly, it will not help Harding to claim that her experiences and social location as a feminist or woman grant her an epistemic advantage—in this case, they make her an especially perceptive reader of early seventeenth-century texts (see her 1991, 121-33, 150-51, and my [1992] and [1994]). Harding's reading of Bacon is a politically inspired reading that goes wrong, and so subverts her claim that feminist scholarship is better because it is deliberately political.
15.
Merchant's "a" true judgment should be the. See note 8, above.
16.
Robbins (1959, 278-79). He suggests—sounding a contemporary note—that James's realization that children had been "falsely charging people as witches" was crucial for his change of mind.
17.
See Farrington (1964, 48-9).
18.
Keller (1978, 413; 1980, 301; 1985, 36) took this sentence from Leiss (1972, 25), who took it from Farrington's translation (1964, 131). Redargutio Philosophiarum is not translated from the Latin in Works III (557-85) and was not published until 1734 (Farrington 1964, 57).
19.
In "Atalanta," Myth 25 of Wisdom of the Ancients (Robertson, 847-48), Bacon says, "Art remains subject to Nature, as the wife to the husband." It seems that Bacon is reversing his purportedly favorite misogynous analogy; instead of the husband science dominating his woman nature in a patriarchal marriage, science is the unfortunate wife who is dominated by nature the man. But his point here has nothing to do with gender; he is saying that science (Atalanta) will not win the race with nature (Hippomenes) if she allows herself to be distracted by baubles—impatiently, quickly gained research results that eventually prove worthless. Bacon uses the Atalanta-and-apples story often, without any obfuscating marital or gender image; see Novum Organum, 70, 117, and "The Plan" of The Great Instauration (Works IV, 29).
20.
In her 1980 essay (308, n. 11), and its revision in Reflections (1985, 36), Keller claims to have taken this passage from Spedding's Description of the Intellectual Globe, Works V, 506; it is not there. In her 1982 essay (598, n. 22), she again says that it is from Description of the Intellectual Globe but now cites p. 506 of Robertson's collection instead of Spedding's Works. On that page, however, is De Augmentis, Book V, chap. 2. The passage is in Farrington's translation of Cogitata et Visa (Thoughts and Conclusions; 1964, 93). See also Leiss (1972, 58, 216 n. 18).
21.
Harding and O'Barr (1987, 233-46; Boyd et al. 1991, 279-88).
22.
Merchant mentions the slave passage twice in the space of two pages (1980,169, 170); and see Bleier (1984, 204-5), who condemns Bacon by reproducing only the slave passage, which she took from Keller (1982).
23.
Bacon, F.1857-1874. The works of Francis Bacon, vols. I-XIV. Edited by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath.London: Longman. Reprinted 1962- 1963. Stuttgart: Verlag.
24.
Bleier, R.1984. Science and gender. New York : Pergamon.
25.
Bordo, S.1987. The flight to objectivity. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
26.
Boyd, R., P. Gasper, and J. D. Trout, eds. 1991. The philosophy of science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
27.
Farrington, B.1964. The philosophy of Francis Bacon. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press. Reprinted 1966. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
Feyerabend, P.1970. Consolations for the specialist. In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, 197-230. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
29.
Harding, S.1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
30.
—. 1989. Value-free research is a delusion. New York Times, October 22, E24.
31.
—. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge?Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
32.
Harding, S., and J. F. O'Barr, eds. 1987. Sex and scientific inquiry . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
33.
Keller, E.F.1978. Gender and science. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought1:409-33.
34.
—. 1980. Baconian science: A hermaphroditic birth. Philosophical Forum11:299-308.
35.
—. 1982. Feminism and science. Signs7:589-602.
36.
—. 1985. Reflections on gender and science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
37.
Leiss, W.1972. The domination of nature. New York : George Braziller.
—. 1990. Science as social knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
40.
Macaulay, T.B.1967. Francis Bacon. In Critical and historical essays, Vol. 2, 290-398. New York: Dutton.
41.
Merchant, C.1980. The death of nature. New York : Harper & Row.
42.
Morgan, R.1977. Going too far. New York: Random House.
43.
Nelson, L.H.1990. Who knows. From Quine to a feminist empiricism . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
44.
Robbins, R.H.1959. The Encyclopedia of witchcraft and demonology. New York: Crown.
45.
Robertson, J. M., ed. 1905. The philosophical works of Francis Bacon. London: Routledge.
46.
Rossi, P.1968. Francis Bacon. From magic to science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
47.
Soble, A.1985. Pornography: Defamation and the endorsement of degradation . Social Theory and Practice11:61-87.
48.
—. 1992. Review of Harding's Whose science? Whose knowledge? in International Studies in the Philosophy of Science6:159-62.
49.
—. 1994. Gender, objectivity, and realism. Monist77:509-30.
50.
Tuana, N.1990. Review of Harding and O'Barr's Sex and scientific inquiry , in American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy89:61-2.
