Brian Vickers has \;literally written the \;book \;on Francis \;Bacon's \;mastery of \;classical and renaissance \;rhetoric. Equally\, work exists examining the relationship between Bacon's conception of natural history and the ars memoria\, for a long time taught as one of the five canons of classical rhetoric (Lewis 2009). This paper wants to pursue a passing\, unpursued \;remark in Stephen Gaukroger's study of Bacon\, noting the comparison between what Bacon in the Novum Organum II \;calls 'prerogative instances' - roughly\, specific kinds of phenomena \;whose artful \;singling out and \;observation in a given object domain will speed the \;induction of true \;generalisations - and the rhetorical 'topics': argument forms recommended by the classical rhetoricians under the canon of 'invention' as \;a means of 'discovering means of persuasion' about some subject. Two observations lie in the background of the analysis. First\, these rhetorical texts - as Bacon remarks in Advancement II - represent the most \;extraordinary \;compendium of discerning phenomenological \;observations concerning \;practical \;sagacity \;and moral psychology: a compendium which Bacon was consummately aware of\, and which lie in the background of his diagnoses of the \;'idols of the mind'. Second\, one register of Bacon's 'new inauguration' indeed involved challenging the Aristotelian conception of natural philosophy as solely contemplative: rather involving what he \;terms \;a 'kind of [theoretical] \;sagacity'\, in order to seek out the true forms and causes of things. Several \;claims are suggested by the comparison and contrasts between the rhetorical \;topics and Baconian instances. The modes of cognition operative in what we term the human sciences are not wholly foreign to or from those at the basis of the Baconian \;scientific culture. Indeed\, the latter owes great debts to the humanistic culture Bacon and his contemporaries inherited and transformed. Scientific inquiry \;is indeed \;not \;an art\, and in the 19th and 20th centuries has largely broken free from the social sciences (the 'second culture')\; but scientific observation involves forms of heightened attentiveness to \;the natural world that are not wholly foreign\, or closed to some modes of artistic creativity. \; \; \;
\nMatthew Sharpe teaches philosophy at Deakin. He has an abiding interest in Bacon and the \;epistemological break[s] associated with the birth of the modern scientific culture.
ORGANIZER;CN=Sean Bowden: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR