Hindsight Bias en 'Of Prophecies' de Francis Bacon

 

Vanity Fea: Hindsight Bias en 'Of Prophecies' de Francis Bacon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Prehistory of Lumpers and Splitters

 Un comentario que pongo en Reflexiones de un primate a cuenta de la descripción de "una nueva especie de orangután":


Dado que hay muchos criterios diferentes para definir qué es una especie, y según los contextos cada uno puede adquirir relevancia diferente (con lo cual no se pueden sumar sencillamente), es inevitable que hay diversas especies de "especie". Por ello mismo será inevitable que quede sin resolver el debate entre los agrupadores de especies, que insisten en la continuidad y proximidad genética, y los "separadores", que insisten en características morfológicas reconocibles y relevantes. Esto de la diferencia entre los "agrupadores" de especies y los "separadores" es comentado de manera muy divertida por Stephen Jay Gould, que los llama respectivamente los "lumpers" y los "splitters". Y hace poco vi que hablaba del mismo tema (si bien no con referencia a las especies) Francis Bacon, en su 'Novum Organum', donde comentaba los obstáculos al entendimiento que el llamaba 'ídolos de la tribu', así:

"§55. La distinción más grave, y en cierto modo fundamental, que se observa en las inteligencias, relativa a la filosofía y a las ciencias, es que unos tienen mayor actitud y habilidad para apreciar las diferencias de las cosas, y otros para apreciar las semejanzas. Los espíritus fuertes y penetrantes pueden fijar y concentrar su atención sobre las diferencias, aun las más sutiles; los espíritus elevados y que razonan, distinguen y reúnen las semejanzas más insignificantes y generales de los seres: una y otra clase de inteligencia cae fácilmente en el exceso, percibiendo o puntos o sombras". ('Novum Organum', SARPE, p. 47)

La paleoantropología humana parece especialmente vulnerable a esta dialéctica insoluble entre 'lumpers' y 'splitters', que encuentra en esta observación de Bacon tal vez su primera exposición. (Esto lo sostendré hasta que algún 'lumper' me cite algo de Platón).

Ideas de especie y especies de ideas

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The Essays of Francis Bacon (FULL Audio Book) part 1

A History of Philosophy (Arthur F. Holmes) | 29 Francis Bacon

Carlos Madrid - Pascal. Entre las matemáticas y la Filosofía Natural I

Will Durant---The Philosophy of Francis Bacon

A Couple of Bacons & Coke

(From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble).

BACON, Francis, first Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans (1561-1626), the fifth son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth 1558-79, by his second marriage to Lady Anne Cooke. Bacon's mother was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI, and was an exceptionally gifted scholar and translator in her own right. One of her sisters married the queen's chief minister *Burleigh. Bacon was born in London, at York House in the Strand, and with his brother Antony went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1573 and 1575; they were tutored by the master, John Whitgift, subsequently archbishop of Canterbury. As part of his grooming for high public office he spent from 1576 to 1579 with the queen's ambassador to France, Sir Amias Paulet, studying statecraft and performing diplomatic duties. Bacon's public career suffered two serious setbacks. His father died suddenly, in Feb. 1579, having settled estates on his first four sons, and in the process of doing so for his youngest. Deprived of an inheritance, Bacon returned to England to become a lawyer, entering Gray's Inn in 1579, graduating in 1582. His abilities were soon recognized, and he was appointed a lecturer and invited to sit on government legal committees while still in his twenties. In 1581 he became an MP (for Bossiney, Cornwall) and served in every parliament until 1621, first in the Commons, then in the Lords. He achieved recognition as a parliamentary speaker, but his boldness in the 1593 session in opposing the unusally heavy taxes the queen wanted led to his being expelled from royal favour, promotion to higher legal office going to his rival, *Coke. The queen continued to employ Bacon in various legal offices, severely testing his loyalty to the Crown by appointing him one of the prosecutors of his former patron the earl of *Essex, whose increasingly headstrong behaviour led him eventually to the scaffold. Under King James, Bacon achieved the public office for which he had so long been preparing. Knighted in 1603, he became king's counsel in 1604, solicitor-general in 1607, attorney-general in 1623, a privy counsellor in 1616, lord keeper in 1617, and lord chancellor in 1618. Having more than emulated his father in public office, he excelled him in rank, being elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Verulam in 1613. and created Viscount St. Albans in 1621. Although remarkable, the promotion was well deserved, for Bacon impressed everybody with his forensic skills, intellectual penetration, and abilty to present complex issues clearly. But the higher reaches of state office carried their own dangers, and Bacon increasingly found that his carefully worked out advice and counsel were ignored both by James and by the court favourite, the first earl of *Buckingham. In the absence of a proper salary structure, government officials under James depended for their livelihood on gifts from suitors and on selling their office, leading to a high degree of corruption from which many (particularly Buckingham) profited. In 1621 a parliamentary group was bent on reform, led by Coke and Sir Lionel Cranfield, attacked the system of monopolies, where lucrative patents were allocated by nepotism (Buckingham's two brothers benefited richly) and enforced by illegal means. While attempting to censure Bacon, who as head of the court of Chancery had issued licenses to patentees at the king's request, they heard of two aggrieved suitors who had followed the custom of giving presents to Bacon as presiding judge, but had not won their case. The government's enemies succeeded in having him impeached in the House of Lords on charges of bribery, even though (unlike other venial judges) he had never allowed such presents to sway his judgement, and at this point both James and Buckingham abandoned him as scapegoat for their own unpopular policies. Bacon's career was ruined: he was given a huge fine, imprisoned in the Tower, and forbidden to come within 10 miles of the court. But the fine was never collected, the imprisonment lasted three days, the whole affair being cynically intended to placate the reform party, while the real abuses continued. Deprived of power, Bacon was vulnerable to Buckingham's greed, and was made to sell York House in the Strand. Out of office, he devoted himself fully to writing, producing in quick succession A History of the Life and Reign of King *Henry VIII (1622), the De Dignitate & Augmentis Scientiarum (1623, a Latin expansion of *The Advancement of Learning), the *Essays (1625), and the posthumously published New Atlantis (1627). Until his downfall, Bacon's writings were the product of the vacations or other leisure time in a busy public career. Simultaneously a Protestant or moderate Calvinist (as his Confession of Faith shows) and a humanist, sharing that movement's emphasis on the individual's duty to take part in a vita activa for the common good, all Bacon's intellectual activities were directed towards practical ends, from which the whole of society would benefit. He outlined many schemes for reforming the laws, making them easier to understand and more coherent; he wanted the universties to widen their curriculum from the three traditional professions (theology, law, medicine) to take in the 'arts and sciences at large'; and he was ahead of his time in realizing that a continous growth of knowledge was possible. Bacon's plan to reform the whole of natural philosophy (or science), outlined in the fragmentary Instauratio Magna (1620), of which the *Novum Organum was the only more or less complete part, aimed to effect a new union beween 'the mind and the universe', from which would spring a range of inventions to 'overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity' (See also BACONIAN THEORY).

Bacon's writings inpired the founding of the *Royal Society in 1662, and had a considerable influence on *Hobbes, *Boyle, *Locke, *Defoe, and many others. The fullest edition of his works was prepared by James Spedding (14 vols, 1857-74); see also Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers.

Advancement of Learning, The, a treatise by F. *Bacon, published 1605, systematizing his ideas for the reform and renewal of knowledge. Book I has a dual task: to defend knowledge in general from all its enemies, ecclesiastical and secular, and to argue for its dignity and value. Surveying the discredits that learning has brought upon itself, Bacon writes brilliantly satirical accounts of medieval Scholasticism, which restricted intellectual enquiry to the text of *Aristotle, and Renaissance Ciceronianism, with its slavish imitation of *Cicero's style. Thse, and other 'diseases' have deflected knowledgte from its true goal, 'the benefit and use of man'.

Book II then undertakes a 'general and faithful perambulation of learning', identifying 'what parts thereof lie fresh and waste', not properly developed. Bacon surveys the whole of knowledge, human and divine (that is, theology), under three headings, history, poetry, and philosophy, corresponding to the three faculties of memory, imagination, and reason. The result is a tour de force, showing a ramarkably wide grasp of many subjects and a penetrating insight into the kind of research needed to develop them, including original analyses of rhetoric, psychology, ethics, and politics. Bacon's 'small globe of the intellectual world', as he called it, has important links with his essays.

Essays, The, of F. *Bacon, first published in 1597, together with the 'Christian Meditations' and 'Of the Colours of Good and Evil', consisted of ten essays, in extremely bare style. The sentences are printed separately, marked with a paragraph sign, giving them the status of aphorisms, discrete observations drawn from experience, in the realm of public life. The second edition (1612) contained 38 essays, in a more varied style, and on a wider range of topics; a manuscript copy now in the British library describes them as his 'writings  . . . in Moralitie, Policie [politics] and Historie'. In this collection Bacon began to fill a lacuna he had noted in his *Advancement of Learning (1605), the lack of concrete knowledge of the different 'natures and dispositions' of human beings, and how they were affected by psychological and social factors (such as gender, health, social standing, physical appearance). The final version, now called Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral (1625), included 58 essays, filling in more of these gaps in treating both 'civil' or public life, and the mores or behaviour of private individuals. Bacon's approach varies greatly from essay to essay, approaching each topic from several different viewpoints, juxtaposing systematic analysis with brilliant aperçus. The styles used range from the detached and laconic to the passionately engaged, especially when expressing his moral beliefs. Dr. *Johnson said that the Essays were 'the observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in consequence you find what you seldom find in other books'.

Novum Organum, a Latin treatise on scientific method, which F. *Bacon included in his Instauratio Magna (1620). This 'great renewal' of natural philosophy (which Bacon never completed) involved a systematic methodology, starting with fresh observation of natural phenomena. followed by carefully controlled experiments, to provide data from which scientific laws could be formulated. The 'new instrument' outlined here (the title alludes to the corpus of Aristotelian philosophy, known as the Organon) abandoned the main tool of logic, the syllogism, which Bacon criticized as a self-contained verbal procedure starting from an a priori premiss. Instead, he advocated an inductive method, generalizing upward from experimental results, tested by the use of 'negative instances' (if 100 white swans are observed, the discovery of a single black one is enough to falsify the thesis that all swans are white).

Book I of the Novum Organum restates in the form of detached aphorisms Bacon's fundamental criticisms of science and his plans for its renewal. Calling for the direct observation of nature (rather than recycling *Aristotle's texts) Bacon was nonetheless aware of the ossible distortions involved, brilliantly analysing the four 'Idols' (from the Greek eidola, illusions) to which human beings are prone. These are the Idols of the Tribe, Cave, Market Place, and Theatre: respectively, the distortions caused by sense perception, which are common to all; distortions caused by differences of temperament and education, arising from particular circumstances of each individual; distortions arising from the treacherous medium of language and the illusions of philosophic systems, these systems being in Bacon's view like so many stage plays, representing imaginary worlds of their own manufacture. In the more technical Book II Bacon gives a worked example of inductive method as applied to heat, using experimental data to construct tables of absence and presence, concluding that heat is a form of motion. Bacon's inductive method has often been misrepresented as a purely mechanical procedure, but recent research has shown that it includes hypothetico-deductive elements, representing a substantial contribution to natural science.

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BACON, Roger (1210-14 - after 1292), the 'Doctor Mirabilis', a phiosopher who studied at Oxford and Paris where he probably became Doctor before returning to England c. 1250, at which time, probably, he joined the Franciscan order. It is likely that he remained at Oxford until c. 1257 when he incurred the suspicion of the Franciscans and was sent under surveillance to Paris where he remained in confinement for ten years. He produced at the request of his friend Pope Clement IV (1265-8) Latin treatises on the sciences (grammar, logic, mathematics, physics, and modern philosophy); his grea work is the Opus Maius, and he also completed an Opus Minus and an Opus Tertium. He was again in confinement for his heretical propositions, c. 1278-92, and is said to have died and been buried at Oxford. He has been described as the founder of English philosophy. A conservative in theology, which he regarded as incomparably supreme among the arts, he advocated support for it from an appeal to experience, rather than from the Scholastic method of argument employed in the Summa of *Albertus Magnus and *Alexander of Hales. He begins by stating the chief causes of error to be ignorance of languages, especially Greek, bad Latin translations, and lack of knowledge of the natural sciences, especially mathematics. At the same time, his outlook remained partly mystical. His attack on the Scholastic method was taken up again and developed by William of *Ockham in the next century. He was a man of immense learning, with a wide knowledge of the sciences and of languages: Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He was also a practical scientist; he invented spectacles and indicated the method by which a telescope might be constructed. He was vulgarly regarded as a necromancer in the Middle Ages because of his interest in the new sciences, especially chemistry and alchemy.

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COKE, Sir Edward (1552-1634), English jurist, called to the bar in 1578. by favour of *Burleigh, he became recorder of London in 1592 and attorney general in 1594, in which capacity he represented the Crown at the trials of *Essex and Southampton (1600-1). *Ralegh, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (1605). He became chief justice of the Common Pleas in 1606 and in that capacity came into conflict with King James about the jurisdiction of the common law courts. In 1613 he became chief justice of the King's Bench and a member of the Privy Council, but conflict with the king continued, and in 1616 he was dismissed by the Council. Coke's importance as a jurist rests on his Reports (1600-15), the first textbook of early modern law. The first book of the Institutes, known as 'Coke upon Littleton' (1628) is a legal encyclopaedia; the last three books (1641) form the basis of modern British constitutional law.

The Three B's: Bacon, Burton, Browne

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The Three B's: Bacon, Burton, Browne

From A Critical History of English Literature, by David Daiches:

While churchmen debated the theory and practice of church government, the secular mind of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was meditating an ambitious scheme for laying anew the foundations of human knowledge on which could be reared an ever-increasing understanding and control of nature. To this scheme he gave the general name of the Great Instauration (or Renewal). Reacting against scholastic philosophy and against all a priori thinking and systems of thought derived deductively from premises laid down by authority, the Great Instauration, basing knowledge on observation, would restore a truer relationship between the observing mind and observed nature and so make scientific progress possible. For Bacon, "the furthest end of knowledge" was not theoretical insight but "the relief of man's estate": it was to be "the benefit and use of man." The sequence was to be from observation to understanding to practical application. Bacon proposed to himself six stages in the realization of this scheme, beginning with the classification of existing knowledge, within a precise mapping of all gaps and deficiencies, and proceeding thorugh the development of a new, inductive, logical method (the New Organon) and the collection of basic data to provide lists of examples of the new method in operation, thence to a preliminary report of the achievements of the method, and finally to a full-dress presentation of the new philosophy and method and its results in explaining the natural phenomena of the universe. The sixth and final stage could not of course be reached by any single individual: it represented the eventual aim of human knowledge. Of the other five stages, the first is represented by Bacon's Advancement of Learning (1605, with an enlarged Latin version in 1623); the second by the unfinished Latin work, Novum Organum, which appeared together with a general statement of the aims and plans of the Great Instauration (Magna Instauratio) in 1620; and the others only in fragments.

Bacon was not the first to propose an inductive scientific theory, or to attack scholasticism; nor did his writings achieve a philosophic revolution of the kind which Descartes bourght about a generation later. Further, he was not in touch with the actual achievements of contemporary science, was ignorant of and sometimes hostile to new advances in astronomy and medicine and curiously uninfluenced by the revival of Greek science and Platonic mathematics which were so important for the scientific achievements of the Renaissance. Nevertheless he spoke with prophetic eloquence of the new conception of knowledge and its function, popularizing a point of view which was to become increasingly significant later in the century. His diagnosis of much of the accepted philosophy of his time as mere verbal jugglery hand something of the same effect as the work of the more popular of the logical positivists and semanticists of the 1930's: "For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh acording to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work but of no substance or profit."

The Advancement of Learning is in two books: the first states and answers arguments that have been brought forward against learning and the second providing a detailed classification of all the kinds of knowledge, with the deficiencies noted. The argument against learning comes from theologians, from politicians, and from the habits and studies of learned men themselves. The first he answers in their own terms; the second he answers by an appeal to history and experience; and in tackling the third he admits that here are "three vanities in studies" which have been responsible for attacks on learning in general. These "vanities" or "distempers" of learning are in ascending order of gravity, fantastic and exhibitionist styles of writing, the kind of logic chopping which degenerates into mere verbalism, and "delight in deceiving and aptness to be deceived, imposture and credulity." The greatest error of all, however, is "mistaking or misplacing the last or furthest end of knowledge"—which is control over nature for the benefit of man. Book I concludes with positive arguments to prove the dignity of learning, both "divine proofs" and divinity to the divines, distinguishing between God's word, as revealed by Him and studied by His ministers, and God's work, the natural world, the province of scientific inquiry; but though the separation between theology and philosophy had been made before (e.g., by William of Ockham), Bacon makes the separation to protect science from religion (to use modern terms) not, as Ockham had done, to protect faith from reason. Thomistic philosophy did not make this separation, subsuming philosophy in theology, but later scholastic thought did sometimes recognize a "twofold truth." Such a division was found useful by seventeenth-century thinkers such as Bacon and Hobbes in providing a clear field for secular thought.

Book II of The Advancement of Learning is a briliant piece of classification, full  of the witty definitions and apt and lively phrases so characteristic of Bacon's vigorous expository style; but in spite of this the modern reader will find this sort of detailed schematization somewhat tedious. Among the many interesting definitions, that of poetry might be singled out, for it is curiously Freudian: "it [poetry] doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things." (The dwindling number of those who profess to believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays might reflect on this definition of poetry and consider whether it could possibly be made to apply to Hamlet or Othello.)

The Novum Organum contains the famous account of "the four classes of idols which beset men's minds," a fine example of the imaginative wit which Bacon so often displayed in making his points. The Idols of the Tribe (deriving from the limitations of human nature), the Idols of the Cave (deriving from personal character and idiosyncrasies), the Idols of the Marketplace (popular superstitions and confusions), and the Idols of the Theatre ("because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage-plays representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion"), all militate against the proper use of observation and reason. Again, this reminds us of a modern semanticist analyzing the sources of verbal confusion or of a psychologist explaining the origins of irrational prejudice. Bacon was not himself a great scientist or a great philosopher; he was a master of prose exposition whose colorful and memorable phrases helped to popularize a new view of science.

The New Atlantis, published incomplete in 1627, is a slight work; it describes how a group of seafarers come upon an unknown island in the South Sea, where they are hospitably entertained and told of the high state of morality and civilization prevailing there, notably of the wonders of Salomon's House, a research institution in the description of which Bacon illustrates his own ideas of how research should be carried on. It all seems rather naïve in an age when scientific research is as highly developed and as much taken for granted as it is now; but it is interesting as providing further evidence of Bacon's desire to popularize his views of the importance of experimental science, that "commerce between the mind of man and the nature of things, which is more precious than anything on earth" as he called it in his Magna Instauratio.

Bacon's Essays—beginning with a volume of ten essays, written in a pungent aphoristic style, in 1597, with expansions and additions and a progressively more discursive style in the volumes of 1612 and 1625, the last containing fifty-eight essays—consist of reflections on human affaires by a practical psychologist who wishes to base his ethical prescriptions on a sound knowledge of human nature. The essay as a literary form had been invented by Montaigne shortly before Bacon adopted it; but Montaigne, with his rambling curiosity about himself and his genial and sceptical humanism, represented a different side of Renaissance thought. The easy flow of Montaigne's prose represented a relaxed self-consciousness far removed from the impersonal wisdom affected by Bacon, whose early essays read almost like a series of proverbs. It is the aphoristic element in his style that makes so many of his sentences—particularly his opening sentences—memorable and quotable. "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." "Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other." "Revenge is a kind of wild justice . . ." "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." "A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others." The essays deal as much with public as with private life, discussing "great place," nobility, "seditions and troubles," empire, and "the true greatness of kingdoms and estates," as well as truth, death, parents and children, marriage, envy, love, and "wisdom for a man's self." He speaks as a man of the world, illustrating his generalizations by references to history (often classical history) and his own experience. Realistic in politics, shrewd but not coldly calculating in practical affairs, Christian in a general theistic way with more than a touch of Stoicism, occasionally rising to somber eloquence in discussing time and change and death or led into the display of a personal enthusiasm as in the essay on gardens, Bacon in his essays is an impressive if hardly an endearing character. There is a moderately Machiavellian side to his thought: "The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy." He is reconciled to human nature: "Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?" He knows how to relax with a variety of delights, but it is significant that he ends his essay on "masques and triumphs" with the sentence: "But enough of these toys." Montaigne in one way, Bacon in another, are very far from the medieval mind; and they are far, too from some of the more passionate movements of their own time. It is hardly extravagant to suggest that Bacon lives in the same world as Benjamin Franklin, not in that of the author of Piers Plowman, or in that of Spenser or Milton or George Herbert.

Bacon's History of Henry VII (1622) is a conscientious study of that king's policy in the light of which he is able to give an integrated picture of the events of his reign. The work shows Bacon's interest in statecraft, his political and legal knowlege, his command of an effective narrative and expository style, and a historico-psychological imagination which enabled him to put imaginary speeches into the mouths of his characters in the manner of classical historians. Others of Bacon's works, more or less fragmentary contributions to the sixfold plan of thee Great Instauration, were published in various collections of his literary remains after his death.

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If Bacon separated God's word and God's work in order to be able to concentrate freely on the latter, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) divided his attention between the two, investigating the facts of nature with a Baconian empiricism (though with a religious excitement at the ingenuity of the Creator thus revealed, which Bacon wholly lacked) and at the same time glorying in his acceptance by faith of religious mysteries on which his imagination loved to dwell. Browne was both Baconian experimentalist and Christian mystic, author both of Pseudodoxia Epidemica (generally known as Vulgar Errors), an exposure of erroneous notions about nature held by the credulous, and of Religio Medici, a discursive statement of his religious faith with a deliberate emphasis on wonder and mystery. The impact of the "new philosophy" in the seventeenth century naturally differed according to the temperament of the individual. Browne had a "unified sensibility" in the sense that he could move freely between mystery and experiment and saw no conflict between the duty of the man of science and that of the man of religion. This is related to his genial autobiographical manner of discussion and his interest in what might be called philosophy as play; if in discussing one kind of truth you are also aware of another kind, you will not be too intense in your method of presenting either.

The relation—sometimes the conflict—between science and religion becomes henceforth an important aspect of English thought. Although seventeenth-century theological controversy for the most part ignored the new science, its effects were indirectly visible in the great debate between those who believed optimistically in inevitable progress and those who held that the world was steadily declining. The classic statement of the pessimisic position was Godfrey Goodman's massive work, The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature Proved by the Light of our Natural Reason, published in 1616. This was answered by George Hakewill's Apology of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World,published in 1627, with enlarged editions in 1630 and 1635. The argument as to whether the world had steadily declined from an original Golden Age or was steadily progressing and improving represents two poles of human thought which are perhaps always with us; but the seventeenth century saw the conflict brought into focus with particular clarity. It was this debate which underlay the conflict between Ancients and Moderns which developed later in the century; whether the classical literature of the Greeks and Romans represented a summit of human literary achievement which later ages could never quite reach, or whther modern refinement and ingenuity could surpass the achievements of the ancient world, was an argument which flowed from the larger debate on the decline of the world. The narrowing of the issue in this way reflects a contraction o the intelelctual universe of the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth centuries as compared with that of the earlier seventeenth century. The comfortable deistic solution of the science-religion conflict, making God the First Cause who retired from the universe after the creation, the divine watchmaker who made and wound up the watch before leaving it to be admired and investigated by the pious and the curious, was the eighteenth-century systematization of a position implicit in Bacon. Scientific progress then becomes increasingly successful in discovering how the watch was made and how it works, while literary progress is measured by the degree to which writers equal or perhaps even excel the great achievements of the classical world.

Sir Thomas Browne remained at the still center of the controversies of his day, cultivating an inclusive tolerance which enabled him to reconcile almost anything with almost anything else. Religio Medici—which circulated for some time in manuscript, and appeared in two unauthorized editions in 1642, before the appearance of the authorized edition in 1643—might almost be called an exercise in inclusiveness of thought and feeling. The very title—"the religion of a doctor"—emphasizes a reconciliation of traditional opposites, the numinous and the scientific; for, as Browne points out in the very first sentence, the world does not generally consider doctors to have any religion at all. His favorite image is the circle, his favorite concept the microcosm. The prose of Religio Medici is so richly harmonized that one might almost say that its meaning is conveyed vertically rather than horizontally. Browne's constant endeavor is to break down distinctions and include all things in a single context. In sentence after sentence he reaches out to embrace apparent contradictions and bring them together; each sentence—or at least each paragraph—is thus a microcosm of the book as a whole. Consider, for example, his discussion of the relation between Protestants and Catholics:

We have reformed from them, not against them; for (omitting those Improperations and Terms of Scurrility betwixt us, which only difference our Affections, and not our Cause,) there is between us one common Name and Appellation, one Faith and necessary body of Principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them, to enter their Churches in defect of ours, and either pray with them, or for them.

Here we have the whole of Religio Medici in little: reformation does not imply disagreement; any admission of difference is softly tucked away within brackets; and at the end there is the cunning suggestion that praying for somebody (which would really indicate that we are concerned for him because he is not of our faith) amounts to the same thing as praying with him (which indicates that we are of the same faith). The actual statement of the case—an appeal for toleration—is reinforced by stylistic devices and by every kind of quasi-logical suggestion that can be derived from language.

Religio Medici begins with a definition of the author's brand of Christianity, a definition which gradually expands to include, by a "general charity to Humanity," virtually all faiths professed by men. Though a member of the Church of England ("there is no Church whose every part so squares onto my Conscience; whose Articles seem so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular Devotion, as this whereof I hold my Belief, the Church of England"), Browne "could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent my self." By various quasi-logical and autobiographical devices he brings all humanity into the circle of his own faith. Faith and reason are at first distinguished:

As for those wingy Mysteries in Divinity, and airy subtleties in Religion, which have unhing'd the brains of better heads, they never stretched the Pia Mater of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith; the deepest Mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by Syllogism and the rule of Reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my Reason to an O Altitudo! . . . I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with the odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, Certum est, quia impossibile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion.

But though faith and reason are thus opposed, they are eventually reunited, if not logically at least symbolically, by being discussed in terms of each other and by the inclusion of both in a third term, such as God's Wisdom, which created the world to be "studied and contemplated by Man: 'tis the Debt of our Reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being Beasts." God's work and God's word are distinguished, but again only to be reunite: Nature is the Art of God. This being so, "there are no Grotesques in Nature." Every created thing is beautiful and wonderful in its way. Man himself is a little world. "We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us, we are that bold and adventurous piece of Nature, which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume." God's work is also a book, like His word. "Thus there are two Books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the Eyes of all; . . . "

Religio Medici continues with the adducing of examples showing the inclusive attitude at work. Both the miraculous and the scientific explanations of the same phenomenon are accepted; atheism is explained away as never having existed; pagan gods are included in the Christian scheme; soul and body, life and death, are so defined as to include each other. Martyrdom is deprecated as symbolizing an exclusive rather than an inclusive attitude. And even when Browne has reluctantly to concede that salvation is granted by God only to Christians, he adds significantly: "Yet those who do confine the Church of God, either to particular Nations, Churches, or Families, have made it far narrower than our Saviour ever meant it." Part II of the work is, logically enough, a discussion of charity, the state of mind which favours maximum inclusion. It is essentially an autobiographical illustration of his own charitable and tolerant disposition: "Methinks there is no man bad, and the worst, best." He can exclude nobody from his charity, and as "every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole World about him," his own tolerance takes on universal dimensions. The work concludes with the author's submission to the will of God.



Browne's style, with its coupling of Anglo-Saxon and Latin words and its sentences composed of an arrangement of fairly short clauses rising and falling in a carefully contrived cadence, is in many respects a reflection of his sensibility. "Do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and you discover the habitation of Angels, which if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent Essence of God, I hope I shall not offend Divinity: for before the Creation of the World God was really all things." The Latinisms here are introduced with a deliberate relish; they reflect that savoring of words and attitudes which is part of Browne's literary character. But it is worth noting that this sentence works up to a crucial statement which is itself expressed (except for the one word "Creation") in words of Anglo-Saxon origin: "for before the Creation of the world God was really all things." Browne's stylistic artifice is perhaps more obvious in Hydriotaphia (Urn Burial) and The Garden of Cyrus, published together in 1658. In the former, the digging up of some old sepulchral urns "in a field of old Walsingham" provokes Browne to eloquent meditation on burial customs of the past and on the mysteries and solemnities of mortality. The opening sentence of the Epistle Dedicatory sets the tone of the work:

When the Funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred Friends, little expecting the curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes, and, having no old experiences of the duration of their Reliques, held no opinion of such after-considerations.

Historical curiosity, philosophical speculation, mystic contemplation, and the suggestiveness and sonority of a rich and carefully manipulated vocabulary, combine to make Hydriotaphia a remarkable piece of virtuosity. The antiquarian, the Platonic mystic, the Christian moralist, and the artist all contribute to the total effect, but the artist is generally in the ascendant. "We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, which maketh Pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment." The artifice here is patent, as it is in the well-known passage beginning "What Song the Syrens sang, . . ." which includes the remarkable sentence: "But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration." The Garden of Cyrus, in its riot of speculation concerning the quincunx pattern in heaven and earth, combines a scientific air with a poetic tone in a strange and fascinating way. Sometimes, the vocabulary is almost a parody of the scientific: "The Reticulum by these crossed cells makes a further digestion in the dry and exuccous part of the Aliment perceived from the first Ventricle." But more characteristic is the famous paragraph which begins the concluding movement of the work:

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge; we are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making Cables of Cobwebs, and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the Oneirocritical Masters have left such frigid Interrpetations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.

No more fascinating evidence exists of the coexistence in the seventeenth century of new scientific ideas and old notions of authority, and of the "hydroptic thirst" for all knowledge, ancient and modern, than the vast encyclopedic treatise by Robert Burton (1577-1640), The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621, with several revised editions between 1625 and 1651. This work, now regarded as a rich anthology of curious notions, picturesque anecdotes, and varied quotations from both ancients and moderns, was intended as a scientific examination of the various distempers of the mind to which Burton gives the generic name "melancholy"—a medical and psychological work in which all known knowledge on the subject would be presented. If it has long been valued as a source of quaint or suggestive quotations or as a work to be dipped into and relished for its oddity,this is because the comprehensiveness of Burton's aim, the transitional nature of the age he lived in, and his own mixture of sympathy, curiosity, erudition, superstition, and common sense, gives his work a texture and a flavor that can be found neither in the medieval world nor in the modern scientific world after the foundation of the Royal Society. The organization of the book into discussion of the symptoms, causes, and cure of different kinds of melancholy is logical enough, but no central principles provide coherence to the whole. Unbounded curiosity about man and a humane and sensible concern for his welfare are perhaps Burton's chief qualities; they are sufficient to give a tone but not to provide a method or a principle of integration to his work. The elaborate and detailed synopses to each "partition" of the work testify to Burton's methodological intentions, but the digressions and the illustrative anecdotes remain the most memorable parts of his book. The long section on "heroica or love melancholy," with its powers, causes, symptoms, and cures, is the richest part of the book to modern eyes, and its quizzical yet sympathetic tone, its profusion of information with a refusal to come down on any side of a controversy, is characteristic of Burton. We must not forget, however, that Burton was an Anglican priest by profession, and when he discusses religious melancholy, as he does in his final section, he mingles religious consolation with the humanist advice to avoid extremes and extravagances. "Thy soul is eclipsed for a time, I yield, as the sun is shadowed by a cloud; no doubt but those gracious beams of God's mercy will shine upon thee again, as they have formerly done: those embers of faith, hope and repentance, now burned in ashes, will flame out afresh, and be fully revived." This is a somewahat different Burton from the writer who, discoursing on the "prognostics" of love melancholy, remarks:

Go to Bedlam for examples. It is so well known in every village, how many have either died for love, or voluntarily made away themselves, that I need not much labour to prove it; Nec modus aut requies nisi mors reperitur amoris [love knows no limit or escape save death]: death is the common catastrophe to such persons.

Mori mihi contingat, non enim alia
Liberatio ab aerumnis fuerit ullo pacto istis.

[Would I were dead, for nought, God knows,
But death can rid me of these woes.]

But quotation can give no conception of the variety and multiplicity of Burton's extraordinary work, in which religion and science intermingle, medicine and psychology are set against a cosmic background, and ironic observations of the human comedy are made the excuse for a display of an almost irresponsible erudition. Burton's prose style is flexible and varied; he can be colloquial, pedantic, picturesque, or epigrammatic. The perpetual interlarding of his English with Latin quotations produces a strange mosaic effect. Perhaps it can be said that Burton had no style: there is too much variety and digression. The Anatomy of Melancholy is, however, a remarkable work, a significant symptom of the times and a tour de force without parallel in English literature.

Leviathan

Of Love—by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, "Of Truth"

Comentario Sobre la Auténtica Grandeza

Este es un comentario de F. Storr y C. H. Gibson al ensayo de Francis Bacon "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and States", y versa sobre el progreso y la evolución social—sobre el desarrollo de la civilización y el perfeccionamiento de las sociedades humanas. Un tema de interés, a mitad de camino entre la sociobiología evolutiva, la teoría de la historia, y la filosofía política. Aparece en una oscura edición escolar de los ensayos de Bacon, publicada hace más de ciento veinticinco años, en 1885 (Bacon's Essays, with Introduction, Annotations, Notes and Indexes by F. Storr, B. A., Chief Master of Modern Subjects at Merchant Taylor's School and C. H. Gibson, M. A., Assistant Master at Merchant Taylor's Schools. Third edition. London: Longmans, Green & Co. and New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1891). Lo republico aquí no como comentario al ensayo de Bacon, pues más bien es un excurso alternativo, sino como muestra del altísimo nivel intelectual de los editores en el contexto del pensamiento de la época, y más en concreto como muestra del impacto y eficacia que tuvo el evolucionismo de Spencer como instrumento para la comprensión intelectual de los más diversos aspectos de la realidad. En concreto, obsérvese cómo aparece aquí anticipada la idea central de la sociobiología actual sobre la adaptación activa del entorno, y la construcción de nichos ecológicos. Se reconoce también, por supuesto, el aire victoriano de época, y el ideal optimista sobre el progreso de una era de expansión imperial, comercial e industrial británica, de una cultura que se veía avanzar hacia la racionalidad, la ilustración y la democracia, a través del esfuerzo colectivo, la ética del trabajo, la educación, la organización de los procesos, y el respeto de los individuos al ideal colectivo de la nación: respeto a la tradición, pero reforma gradual y constante de las costumbres y las instituciones. Ese optimismo hoy podemos mirarlo casi con nostalgia y envidia—pero quizá deberíamos aprender más de una cosa de estos constructivos y decimonónicos victorianos, antes que darlos por definitivamente finiquitados. Añado enlaces relevantes donde parece oportuno.

Of True Greatness: Annotations and Hints

"All nature widens upwards. Evermore
    The simpler essence lower lies.
More complex is more perfect, owning more
    Discourse, more widely wise."

i. The Latin title of this Essay is "de proferendis imperii finibus." To Bacon, national greatness is synonymous with expansion by conquest. It is the highest excellence of states as well as of individuals (1), to profess arms. All other conditions of national prosperity, as we understand the term, are subordinate to war. Bacon must be judged by his own times, and by his literary antecedents. The ancients conceived the progress of science, but both to antiquity and mediaevalism, national progress was limited by the number of worlds to conquer. Bacon, in the Advancement (2) and Novum Organum (3), speaks enthusiastically of the advance of knowledge, though he says too much about "cycles" as opposed to continuous advance, and is too sanguine about "royal roads" to learning, and the possibility of a universal encyclopaedia. As to national greatness, he believed in the necessity of constant war, and in 1607, spoke strongly in the House of Commons in favour of a spirited war policy ; contrasting the imperial schemes of Spain with the "reckonings and audits" of Britain. Here Bacon is certainly not in advance of his own times. As a philosopher, he was the radical reformer of antiquity, and as a statesman, he might have advocated, instead of barely tolerating, the industrial spirit. There were many clear signs that the military spirit was passing away, but such prescience is hardly to be looked for in an Elizabethan statesman. France and Spain each regarded England as the prize and prey of the victor. The policy of both the Cecils, Bacon's uncle and cousin, was to play off one power against the other, and at the same time to stand prepared for an attack from either side.

    ii. Progress is a modern idea. The march of humanity onwards and upwards, was but dimply perceived before the present century. Aristotle conceived of gradual ascent of matter to form, and by his doctrine of "potential existence," foreshadowed the great law of evolution. But in Greece, the commonly received idea of national life was that various forms of government succeeded one another in a cycle. Experience bore this out, and further taught that destruction, rather than progress, was to be expected. Further, the Greeks considered infinity of the nature of evil ; all that is good is finite and measurable. The spreading power of Rome, especially during the early empire, suggested the idea of a world civilized by Roman influences, but the final lesson was that overgrown power falls to pieces. The Romans never conceived progress except as the gradual absorption of the world by Roman civilization which was ex hypothesi perfect.

     iii. Mediaeval thought was on the lines of antiquity. Besides, in the Middle Ages, men only saw falling kingdoms, and a shifting chaos of military supremacies, rather than well-defined national divisions. The Church, too, distinctly opposed the idea of human perfectibility. The reaction of Luther only turned men to see more clearly their own moral and spiritual degradation (4). The great discoveries of the Elizabethan age were but germs of future greatness. Even the outburst of literary life was short-lived, and seemed to pale before that of Greece and Rome. As late as the seventeenth century, it was thought necessary to prove, as Bishop Hakewill did, that man had not degenerated.

     iv. Vico, who lived from 1668 to 1743, first grasped intelligently the idea of progress. According to him, there are two sorts of progress. "That of nations from insignificance, passing through a period of greatness to insignificance, and that of humanity, the march of one that advances and never recedes." This progress is from the restraint of physical force, nulle terre sans seigneur, to the free obedience of rational beings to reason. The flaw in Vico's proposition is that he conceives that nations necessarily flourish and decay, and that, as long as a nation holds the foremost place in the world, its history is the history of humanity. This is not the case: all grow together at different rates of speed as parts of a great whole.

     v. Though Vico undoubtedly understood the problem of progressive history, the comparative method, which regards each phase of existence as a stepping-stone to something higher, was not conceived either by the philosophic or the popular mind in the eighteenth century. Viewed from the standpoint of evolution, progress is an infinite series of ever-increasing complexity, in which each lower factor is contained in that next above it. The two ideas which dominated the eighteenth century, were the immediate perfectibility of man, and the degradation of society. Some looked forward to a model state which existed only in imagination ; others looked back to a golden age of primitive simplicity. In some cases the tendencies were purely destructive ; existing institutions were absolutely to be destroyed. But most thought that humanity was perfectible, and preached the doctrine of an iron present, and a golden future. Doctrinaires had to learn again that utopias are vanity, humanity imperfect, and that nature nihil facit per saltum.

    vi. In the nineteenth century we find the gradual rise of the comparative treatment of all branches of human knowledge applied to the phenomena of human progress. German thought, led by Hegel, with his "philosophy of history," and Goethe's "life of plants," first developed the idea to practical results. In the non-mechanical sciences, wich deals with things in process of development, the question to be asked is not "What is it and what are its antecedents now?" but, "How did this grow and to what is it growing?" In other words, the growth of causes, "crescente variables," have to be investigated. The attention is fixed solely on the increasing cause, and its law or series is determined as nearly as possible. Such a law is a law of progress, and progress is consciously realized only in so far as definite results have been obtained. Hitherto we have got plenty of laws, but many of them are hypothetical and want verification and filling up. More is required than a blank formula often vague and unsatisfying. So thought has been derived from sensation, through ideas or remembered sensation ; abstract language from onomatopoeia, and interjections definitely and consciously attached to sensations. In the case of man, the "crescent variable" is reason. Progress is convertible with the growth of reason. The end of man is to do his own proper work in the best possible way. The greater the number of men who do so, the greater and more real the progress. The better the work, the more it is in accordance with reason. Reason may be defined as the faculty by which we conceive ends, and consciously adapt means to such ends. The growth of plants and animals is through instinctive adaptation to their environment. Man consciously modifies his own surroundings, as well as adapts himself to them.

    vii. Freedom to develop and opportunities for development are primary necessities. Enfranchisement and education must precede as well as follow progress. Monopolies, class privileges, standing armies, go hand in hand with ignorance. The man who has no responsibilities has no aspirations. Originality tends to heterodoxy and rebellion against authority. Science and literature subject to the requirements of sacerdotalism and despotism can attempt no daring flights.

    viii. Though reason is a crescent variable capable of infinite development from within, there are stationary elements such as climate, food, geographical position, and language, which cannot completely be eliminated. The ethiopian cannot change his skin, and human agency can but sligthly modify physical surroundings.

    ix. In describing progress in terms of reason, the growth of morality and religion as well as of material advance, can be equally recognized. In assuming that the world becomes more rational, it is not to be supposed that it becomes less moral, but rather that the claims of morality are more and more realized by reason, and that religion is brought into closer harmony with reason. The higher the morality, the more rational. "Kill nobody," is better wisdom than "kill not ta member of your tribe," and is at the same time more moral (5). We need not fall into Mr. Buckle's mistake of supposing that morality is stationary, reason progressive.

    x. No man can do everything. Each does one thing best. Civilization tends towards specialization. At first the same man is warrior, hunter, artisan,—a jack-of-all-trades. As things increase in complexity there is a tendency to separate off one individual or class for each work. The highest stage is when the differentiated products become so special as to be severally incapable of performing the other's work. Further, every new differentiation implies increase of population. The better a man does his own work the greater his dependence on the good work of others. Every new discovery specializes, and at the same time draws men together. Printing, gunpowder, steam, railways, emphasize all pre-existing differences, create new ones, and make all more dependent on the functions of others. And further, each specialization of any class ipso facto produces organic changes which lead to the specialization of other classes. As music improves, dancing and singing improve. As the eye sees better, the hand grows better fitted for its own work. The danger of specialization is the loss of spontaneity and many-sidedness.

    xi. The great truth of specialization of functions, leads to a difficulty. If the Puritan and popular standpoint is correct, and if every man can be his own prophet, priest, and king, progress depends in a great measure on the way in which every man applies for himself the principles of morality, religion, and government, to the business of life. But if, on the other hand, morality, government, and religion get more complex, and are lost sight of in the fierce rush of worldly pursuits and the engrossing claims of self-love, then more than ever men will need the great moralist, preacher, and statesman, who will point out the truth, and disentangle the principles of true life from the tangled web of competition and pleasure. Laissez faire, may be as obstructive as over-government. Leaving the social organism to run wild is not necessarily giving it room to develop. (Y aquí es donde se separan más los autores, con buen criterio, de la perspectiva hiper-liberal de Spencer).

    xii. Laws of progress are only rough generalizations of tendencies. Modern thought suffers from insisting too strongly on the analogy between social and other organism, between the life of plants and of men. We can read the past only in outline, the future is a sealed book. It is not possible to forecast how far this or that nation will have advanced within a specific period. Herbert Spencer's great law is "Evolution is a process or progression from the simple homogeneous to the complex heterogeneous by continuous differentiation and integration." Or differently expressed, "All progress is through stages—unity, plurality, singularity." Humboldt says that "the end of government is the development of man in the greatest originality and variety possible." Matthew Arnold would have more "culture," a vague and ideal formula. Mill insists on the necessity of representative institutions—an engine, not an end. Comte expresses the history of humanity by three stages—the theological, metaphysical, and positive. "History," says Hegel, "is the embodiment of reason carried out through the imperfect medium of man's spirit." But the course of universal reason is either obscured or contradicted by exceptions, so that it is hardly ever possible to predict the next step. The human mind is virtually a sealed book. The great man is an incalculable factor in the problem of progress. This is especially the case with scientific as opposed to social and political progress. We can roughly sum the series and isolate the phenomena in the past, and see in outline how reason develops, but neither the nation nor the individual repeats itself, and we can only hope for a more complete union of individual ends with universal reason. A perfect science of history is an ideal which fades as we move.

    xiii. Is progress a fact? There are always laudatores temporis acti, who sigh for a past that never was present. Most of us are one-sided, at the mercy of the strongest impression, and unable to look out of our life. In the present, evil seems actively predominant. Good seems ever liable to decay, except by constant watching and personal care.

"The evil that men do lives after them ;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones."

The future is hidden, the good of the past—de mortuis nil nisi bonum—is alone remembered, and encircled with a halo of virtue. Reverence and imagination lend to the past an illusory brightness. Further, there has been a tendency in the human mind, from the Preacher to Schopenhauer, to believe rather in present corruption than in future progress.

    xiv. Apart from the natural tendency to grumble, most reforms are attended by a certain loss. The Puritan movement was accomplished at the cost of much that was valuable in art, literature, and manners. On a comparison of the age of Elizabeth with that of the Protectorate, England, in spite of much material advance, will seem to have retrograded. Many see only retrogression in the decay of chivalry. Even feudalism is a valuable counterpoise to the worship of money. "Since the Reformation, the whole tendency of the world has been in an industrial direction." Progress is often obscured or diverted into one channel. Change is not progress (6), nor is freedom by itself. "Intellectual emancipation," says Goethe, "if it does not give us control over ourselves, is poisonous." The truest freedom is rational obedience to law, whether given from without or within. No one should be free till he knows how to obey.

    xv. There is a dark side of the picture. Increased machinery and wealth have hardly benefited the masses. There is a growing tendency to inequality of property. Monopolies are not dead. Adultreation is too strong for the law. The union of democracy with the Church is not impossible, but the tendency of democracy is to aim only at material prosperity. In giving all an opportunity of rising, there seems some danger of dragging down rather than moving up, and fewer are willing to hold subordinate positions. Government tends to become "a joint-stock concern for the practice of Thrift." Improved social machinery tends to destroy self-help. Artificial helps lessen the struggle for existence, withouth which there will be degeneracy; men must go forward or go back. Malthusianism only sees ground for hope in checking population, communism is wholesale robbery and retrogression. Further, the traditional and fundamental principles of religion, morality, and society are questioned as hardly ever before. The fearful propaganda of Nihilism daily warns us that we live on a volcano. There is a feverish craving for novelty and excitement. Agnosticism is openly preached as a creed, and the sovereignty of reason is appealed to by the irrational. The policy of "blood and iron" is triumphant on the continent. These and many other considerations suggest the question, "are we progressing?" Thus the doctrine of despair, taught by Schopenhauer, is echoed in countries which have less ground for pessimism than Germany (7): "To will, i.e. to live, is to suffer," will being the conscious application of force. The higher the civilization, the more consciously active, and, therefore, the more miserable is man. The only remedy is self-annihilation.

xvi. The vigorous mind will learn to look beyond. Pessimism argues a want of historical perspective. The pessimist ignores the comparative method, looks only at the present time, and only to some special phase of the present time. Then he rails, like Carlyle in his "Latter-day Pamphlets" (8), against democracy and all the first-born of Egypt. There is a shadow which saddens life, but a great mind may feel this without bewailing that the world is all out of joint. According to Leopardi, every stage of existence—science, culture, religion, commercial industry, and politics—wherein man seeks happiness, are all stages of illusion. Pessimism can never be a philosophy of life; it belongs to the effete dreamy Eastern character. In the East, life is a constant thirst and craving which is never satisfied. Pessimism may suit the lazy mysticism of Buddhism, but vanishes before the gospel of "act and you shall know." Asceticism is only another form of pessismism, a protest against nature. It is not healthy to dwell with too accurate diagnosis on national pathology. Men are too ready to prophesy evil and then wish to see their prophecies fulfilled. Further, the disorder and evils of transition are a necessary stage.

xvii. The belief in an infinite series of progress is almost a religion to the best minds. "Let us allow and believe," says Wordsworth, "that there is a progress of the species toward unattainable perfection; or whether this be so or not, that it is a necessity of a good and gifted nature to believe in it." "Kant, while arguing that past progress does not necessarily imply future progress, sees surer ground for advance in the enthusiastic sympathies, excited throughout Europe by the outbreak of the French Revolution" (9). The French Revolution was more successful as a destructive than a constructive movement. It swept away the abuses of feudalism and class-privilege. Its dreams of universal brotherhood, a federation of nations, and a reign of universal reason were not realized. Yet with all its illusions, and in spite of all its crimes, it promoted freedom of thought, which is the tap-root of civilization. Compare the whole world, as it is, with the world as it was, or even a novel of George Eliot with one of Fielding or Smollett, and doubts will be quieted. We may yet live to see the "parliament of man, the federation of the world." The idea of international law and national conscience steadily grows. In catching sight of the universal, there seems some danger of losing many of the lights and shades of individual progress ; but the race, as a whole, is advancing, in spite of back-eddies.

"Not in vain the distance beckons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change."

Goethe says that each man, like a star, should move restless but hasteless in his own sphere. For such there will be no more sickly questions whether "life is worth living."



____


(1) See Essay on Empire.
(2) Bk. ii, xxiv.
(3) i. cxxix.
(4) See Guesses at Truth, p. 313, et seqq.
(5) See Essay on Goodness and Goodness of Nature.
(6) See Essay on Innovation.
(7) See Sully's Pessimism, London, 1877.
(8) On The Present Time.
(9) Guesses at Truth.
[See also Essay on Innovation]

Consiliencia, evolución y anclaje narrativo

Hindsight Bias en 'Of Prophecies' de Francis Bacon

Al fenómeno de la distorsión retrospectiva o hindsight bias ya le he dedicado bastantes trabajos, e incluso un blog monotemático, que lo denomino "Retrospection". Se ha popularizado alrededor de este año 2000 sobre todo en cuestiones de análisis económicos, y también en medicina, aunque es una cuestión inherente a la filosofía de la historia, la teoría de la narración, etc. Interdisciplinar, vamos, como la narratología misma.

Podíamos definir a la distorsión retrospectiva o hindsight bias como una ley psicológica de la percepción, contraria en sus efectos a la conocida ley Gestaltista de "la primacía de las primeras impresiones." Se supone (y es cierto) que las primeras impresiones de un objeto, persona, fenómeno, etc., marcan y perduran, y que las percepciones subsiguientes son modificaciones efectuadas sobre la base de una primera impresión que ha marcado ya la tónica. Ahora bien, puede igualmente sostenerse lo contrario: la importancia de las últimas impresiones, y allí llegamos a la distorsión retrospectiva. Las experiencias recientes actúan retroactivamente sobre las anteriores, e incluso sobre las primeras impresiones, distorsionándolas, de modo que podríamos hablar de la primacía de las últimas impresiones. "Nunca digáis de un hombre que ha sido afortunado hasta que haya llegado su última hora" decía el coro de Edipo Rey, y puede servirnos de ejemplo de hindsight bias. Las últimas impresiones modifican todo lo que ha venido antes, lo someten a su ley, y lo convierten en una mera preparación de lo que iba a seguir. Que la cuestión es compleja puede colegirse del hecho de que ambas leyes tienen su parte de verdad, la primacía de lo primero, y la primacía de lo último. Parafraseando a Samuel Beckett, podríamos decir que al principio, es el principio lo que parece lo más importante. Luego se ve que era la parte de enmedio la más importante, y al final, es el final lo que resulta ser lo más importante. Pues a fin de cuentas es el final lo que queda, cuando todo acaba.

Sirva de ejemplo del uso del concepto de hindsight bias en teoría económica este artículo de Mari Adam sobre las previsiones engañosas, o ilusiones de previsiones acertadas, en materia de inversiones:

Speaking last week at an investment conference, behavioral finance expert Dr. Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago warned listeners how hindsight bias can play havoc with your investment strategy. In simplest terms, hindsight bias is “the tendency to remember that our forecasts were better than they really were” or the “I knew it all along” effect.

Looking back, we think we knew or suspected something was going to happen before it happened. For example, how many times have you heard people say “they saw the tech bubble coming in 1999″ or they “saw the signs that the market was going to crash in 2008?”

The problem is that empirical research shows our recollections are just not correct. Looking back after an event, test subjects claim “they knew it all along.”  But prior to the event, results show they had no idea what was really going to happen.

Hindsight bias has a very powerful  – and usually negative – effect on our investment behavior.  How can we keep it from sabotaging our investment strategy?

Process, Not Prognostication

Investors need to start by acknowledging that their forecasting ability is far from perfect, and rely instead on a disciplined, systematic investment strategy rather than ”hunches” or “instincts” to grow their wealth. That’s why sticking to a consistent asset allocation, rather than trying to time the market,  is a proven and successful investment technique.

Investment adviser Larry Swedroe puts it well.  “The bottom line is that hindsight bias is very dangerous. It causes investors to recall their successes, but not their failures. It also causes investors to believe that investment outcomes are far more predictable than they actually are.” To combat the effects of hindsight basis, make sure you have a rational basis for buying or selling an investment (you might even find it helpful to write down your reasons on paper). Back up your decisions with facts instead of relying on “perceptions.” Compare performance results with relevant benchmarks to improve your objectivity.

Curb Your Overconfidence

“The most obvious result of hindsight bias is overconfidence among investors. It leads them to believe that just because they predicted past events, they can do the same for the future and invest accordingly. However, these predictions invariably turn out to be wrong ” writes financial journalist Vivek Kaul of India’s Economic Times.

Los Angeles financial planner David Zuckerman  agrees.  “One of the most important implications of hindsight bias is that it gives investors a false sense of security when making investment decisions.  Overestimating the accuracy of past forecasts can lead to excessive risk taking.”

This was confirmed in a 2008 study of investment bankers in London and Frankfurt that found traders with higher levels of hindsight bias did worse in managing investments and those with lower levels of  hindsight bias had better investment results.  Why?  Researchers suggest that hindsight-biased traders didn’t recognize that their view of the market was wrong, underestimated risk, and failed to learn from mistakes. Those with a more realistic appreciation of their abilities and limitations correctly measured and managed risk.

 

Respect the Random, Irrational and Unknown

In his 2007 book, author Nassim Taleb popularized the idea of a “black swan”  event - one highly unlikely and unpredictable but potentially extreme in impact.  Unfortunately, ”black swan” events, like the 2008 Great Recession or the housing meltdown, seem to happen more often than would be predicted, partially as a result of hindsight bias which causes us to minimize the variability and volatility of everyday events.

A good investor recognizes that life does not always play out according to plan.  Expect the unexpected.  Ask yourself what can go wrong and hedge against it, rather than focus exclusively on what you believe will go right.  Remember why we stress the mantra of diversification.  It’s not to increase returns; it’s to protect you should events not turn out exactly as you would like.

De Taleb ya hablamos a este respecto en "El efecto Mateo y la calidad retroactiva".

Bien, a lo que iba. Trazar la historia del concepto de hindsight bias es problemático, porque es a la vez amplio y difuso—se difunde en multitud de fenómenos relacionados, y por supuesto normalmente no se usa este término para cubrirlos a todos. De hecho, en teoría narrativa y literaria no se viene usando el término, aunque son frecuentes las teorizaciones relativas a retrospección y hindsight, y al contraste entre expectativas pasadas y presentes de narradores o personajes. Por ejemplo en las caracterizaciones del yo narrador frente al yo narrado (o yo personaje) en narratología, al discutir las novelas en primera persona, o al establecer la diferencia de perspectiva entre las modalidades narrativas de la novela en forma de memoria (con conocimiento retrospectivo amplio por parte del narrador) y la novela en forma de diario o cartas (con escasa perspectiva retrospectiva por parte del narrador). Yendo muy atrás, podríamos remontarnos a los análisis aristotélicos sobre la noción de argumento o mythos, que (tal como mostró Paul Ricœur en Temps et récit) es un instrumento de configuración temporal inherentemente retrospectivo—contiene en sí, por así decirlo, un hindsight bias de oficio, pues el principio está allí narrado con vistas a lo que será el final del argumento; van ligados principio medio y final en una lógica causal-temporal que no es sólo prospectiva, sino también retrospectiva. No sabemos dónde comenzó la historia, a menos que sepamos dónde acaba.

Como digo, es difícil discernir cada momento de la consciencia de la mente crítica en el que estas cuestiones van haciéndose explícitas, y reflexivamente conscientes—es decir, cuando no sólo se "comete" la falacia de la retrospección, pues ha de cometerse siempre de una manera u otra, al ser inherente a la existencia temporal y a la comprensión del pasado, sino que también, además de cometerse o realizarse, se entiende o analiza, con conocimiento crítico, identificando el fenómeno, mostrando sus modalidades, y y poniéndole nombre. En "La lógica de la narratividad según Polibio" señalábamos en el historiador griego Polibio un caso temprano de conciencia crítica de esta imbricación paradójica del presente, el pasado y el futuro en la narración.

Otro momento clave de la consciencia crítica sobre la distorsión retrospectiva aparece con el pensamiento crítico de la primera modernidad, en esta ocasión en la obra de Francis Bacon. Ilustrado avant la lettre, Bacon busca combatir la ignorancia y las supersticiones populares, a la vez que apunta un tanto maquiavélicamente la utilidad que tienen para manejar a los crédulos, que son muchos. En muchos aspectos de su obra aparece esta visión crítica, en especial en su discusión sobre los ídolos, o "falacias cognitivas" diríamos hoy, que obstaculizan el entendimiento y la correcta comprensión de las cosas. Hay diversas categorías de ídolos: los del foro, los del teatro, los de la tribu, los de la caverna...

Probablemente haya que colocar la propensión humana al hindsight bias, y a la creencia en profecías, entre los ídolos de la tribu, es decir, los relativos a las propensiones cognitivas y limitaciones de la mente humana, como son el establecimiento de categorías dicotómicas, o o la confusión entre secuencia y causalidad (post hoc non ergo propter hoc). Los Essays de Bacon pueden leerse aquí. Veamos lo que dice Bacon sobre el hindsight bias en su ensayo sobre las profecías, "Of Prophecies", donde busca desacreditar a farsantes, estafadores y falsos profetas tipo Nostradamus. Presenta varios casos de profecías popularmente consideradas acertadas, por ejemplo, la predicción del descubrimiento de América en Séneca:

--Venient annis
Saecula seris, quibus Oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat Tellus, Tiphysque novos
Detegat orbes; nec sit terris
Ultima Thule:

y termina el ensayo con este párrafo jugoso:

There are numbers of the like kind; especially if you include dreams, and predictions of astrology. But I have set down these few only, of certain credit, for example. My judgment is, that they ought all to be despised; and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside. Though when I say despised, I mean it as for belief; for otherwise, the spreading, or publishing, of them, is in no sort to be despised. For they have done much mischief; and I see many severe laws made, to suppress them. That that hath given them grace, and some credit, consisteth in three things. First, that men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss; as they do generally also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves into prophecies; while the nature of man, which coveteth divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. As that of Seneca's verse. For so much was then subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great parts beyond the Atlantic, which might be probably conceived not to be all sea: and adding thereto the tradition in Plato's Timaeus and his Atlanticus, it mought encourage one to turn it to a prediction. The third and last (which is the great one) is, that almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been impostures, and by idle and crafty brains merely contrived and feigned, after the event past.

En este párrafo de Bacon se echa de ver cómo el fenómeno de la profecía queda explicado por un complejo de diversas tendencias: sólo nos acordamos de las profecías acertadas, y olvidamos las erradas. Es un primer caso de distorsión retrospectiva. El segundo caso se debe a la vaguedad: tras un acontecimiento, tendemos a leer como un caso de referencia directa a él, en la profecía que lo precedió, lo que no es sino una vaguedad o generalidad que podría haberse aplicado igualmente a otras muchas cuestiones diferentes o a otros acontecimientos de ese mismo carácter que puedan suceder. Nuestra atención se centra de manera distorsionadora (hindsight bias) en la relación destacada por la mente entre la profecía y el evento, y podría decirse que por mero Gestaltismo, se crea una ilusión de profecía acertada.

Y el tercer caso es todavía otra variante más de un razonamiento muy consciente del hindsight bias. Un hindsight bias en segundo grado quizá podría llamarse: pues en este caso, no es que la profecía preceda al acontecimiento, sino que lo sigue: y la profecía es inventada después y plantada falsamente en un momento anterior, por falsificación o engaño: de modo que puede permitirse ser mucho más exacta y precisa que en los casos anteriores.

Sean o no concebibles otras variantes, hay que colocar a Bacon en lugar destacado entre quienes, lejos de limitarse a ejercer con alegría la distorsión retrospectiva, la sometieron a crítica racional, y empezaron a conceptualizar sus mecanismos y modalidades.

El Ángel de la Historia

 

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