Cesare Pastorino

The key role that Francis Bacon played in the re-evaluation of mechanical arts is a well-established tenet of the scholarship on the Scientific Revolution. However, scholars tend to assume that Bacon's knowledge of technologies and their methods came from learned texts and that his familiarity with the crafts of his time was scant or non-existent. By contrast, this essay shows that Bacon's philosophical discussion of experimentation owes a large debt to his concrete acquaintance with early Stuart craftsmen applying for royal privileges and patents for new technical inventions. Bacon personally supervised the drafting of many of these privileges. In his philosophical work, he adapted legal requirements-devised to identify inventions unambiguously-to describe and analyze experimental practices. This evidence directly affects the long-standing debate on the role of crafts in the rise and development of early modern science. In the case of Francis Bacon, it is possible to find a concrete and precise connection between crafts methodologies and the philosophical description of experimentation.

This paper analyzes Francis Bacon's observations on institutions for the advancement of knowledge and technical innovation. Early references to establishments for the promotion of knowledge can be found in Bacon's early works, in the 1590s. Bacon's journey to France in the second half of the 1570s might have played a role in shaping these early conceptions. In particular, Bacon was likely acquainted with Jaques Gohory's Lycium philosophal and Nicholas Houel's Maison de Charité Chrétienne. In the period following the composition of The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon focused his attention on the foundation of a college for inventors. Practical plans for the establishment of a college were discussed in the Commentarius solutus (1608). Bacon's proposals addressed his general concerns for the production of technological innovation in Stuart society; both the college of the Commentarius and the imaginary institution of Salomon's House in the New Atlantis (1626) can be seen as inventor's utopias, where innovators are freed from the pressures of the world of crafts. Such institutions were likely inspired by analogous continental projects. Again, the case of France may be relevant; around the time of Bacon's proposals for his college, Henri IV was actively fostering collaboration among skilled inventors under royal patronage, and outside the strict control of the guild system.

Weighing of experience was a central concern of what Bacon called the “literate” stage of experimentation. As early as 1608, Bacon devised precise tenets for standard, quantitative reporting of experiments. These ideas were later integrated into his experimental histories proper. Bacon’s enquiry of dense and rare is the best example of experientia literata developed in a quantitative fashion. I suggest that Bacon’s ideas on this issue can be tied to experiments for the determination of specific gravities born in a monetary context: Bacon’s investigation was very likely a generalization of Jean Bodin’s experiments in Universae naturae theatrum (1596). Overall, Bacon’s program of quantification calls for a revision of established historiographical notions, especially Thomas Kuhn’s sharp dichotomy between a mathematical and a Baconian experimental tradition in seventeenth-century science.

"Notwithstanding Francis Bacon’s praise for the philosophical role of the mechanical arts, historians have often downplayed Bacon’s connections with actual artisans and entrepreneurs. Addressing the specific context of mining culture, this study proposes a rather different picture. The analysis of a famous mining metaphor in _The Advancement of Learning_ shows us how Bacon’s project of reform of knowledge could find an apt correspondence in civic and entrepreneurial values of his time. Also, Bacon had interesting and so far unexplored links with the early modern English mining enterprises, like the Company of Mineral and Battery Works, of which he was a shareholder. Moreover, Bacon’s notes in a private notebook, _Commentarius Solutus_, and records of patents of invention, allow us to start grasping Bacon’s connections with the metallurgist and entrepreneur Thomas Russell. Lastly, this paper argues that, to fully understand Bacon’s links with the world of Stuart technicians and entrepreneurs, it is necessary to consider a different and insufficiently studied aspect of Bacon’s interests, namely his work as patents referee while a Commissioner of Suits."

The extant versions of the Index Chemicus have recently been edited and published for the first time as a part of the digital humanities project The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, based at Indiana University-Bloomington. The purpose of this project is to transcribe, digitize, edit, and ...

This is a study of the links between Francis Bacon and the technical experimenters and projectors of the early Stuart age, and of Bacon's philosophy of technical invention and experiment. This project reappraises the literature on the role of mechanical arts in Francis Bacon. In the past, scholars often maintained that Bacon's knowledge of mechanical arts was limited to learned sources and authors of Renaissance technical treatises, and that his actual links with artisans and entrepreneurs of his time were negligible. This research shifts attention to early Stuart society, and to Bacon's concrete involvement in economic and institutional activities. A major aspect of this work is the study of a set of early modern archival records, the "privileges" for new industrial processes and patents of inventions that Francis Bacon reviewed while a Solicitor and Attorney General during the reign of James I. While Elizabethan privileges for inventions are well documented, this group of early Stuart institutional documents has never been properly analyzed before this investigation. Also, Bacon's role as a patent referee has hardly been mentioned in literature. A scrutiny of this new evidence has shown that Francis Bacon was close to a network of early Stuart mining projectors and assayers, technical practitioners, and inventors of the mechanical arts. Francis Bacon's familiarity with the world of craftsmen significantly contributed to the development of his philosophy. Important methodological features of the "works" of mechanical arts were absorbed into Bacon's system. An analysis of the central concept of experientia literata (Literate Experience), the key notion behind Bacon's influential experimental histories, shows that Bacon developed this idea paying close attention to the actual practices of mechanical artisans of his time. Bacon's enquiry of dense and rare is the best example of an application of the quantitative research program of experientia literata. Bacon‘s ideas on this issue can be tied to experiments for the determination of specific gravities developed in a monetary context. Overall, Bacon‘s program of quantification calls for a revision of Thomas Kuhn‘s sharp dichotomy between a mathematical and a Baconian experimental tradition in seventeenth-century science.

The General Scholium is commonly associated with Newton's theological declarations and with his famed methodological principle, " hypotheses non fingo. " However, only a few lines after his considerations on scientific method, Newton added a puzzling reference to a " certain very subtle spirit " hidden inside gross bodies. The operations of the spirit were responsible for a long list of phenomena, including the action of electrical bodies, the interaction of light and matter, perception in living bodies and transmission of nervous stimuli from the brain to the body parts. Nevertheless, Newton concluded, " these things cannot be explained in a few words, " as the laws describing the activity of the spirit are not well known. A strong body of literature has now connected the spirit of the Scholium with Newton's late reflections on an electric spirit responsible for natural actions at a short distance. In the last paragraph of the General Scholium and of Principia, Newton was alluding to a research program complementing the one on gravity: the investigation of non-gravitational, short-range forces operating between the small particles of bodies. This paper focuses on Newton's long-lasting interest for the investigation of interparticulate actions, strengthened, in the first decade of the eighteenth century, by Francis Hauksbee's experiments on electricity, cohesion and capillarity. It considers Newton's work on this subject, during the revision proposition 42 of book 3 of Principia on comets; in fact, it shows that Newton's reflection on comets, vegetation and the electric spirit was closely intertwined with the early development of the General Scholium itself. Finally, it focuses on the issue of the alchemical features of the spirit. This notion perfectly integrated into what was fundamentally a Helmontian theory of matter and vegetation, allowing the description of a wide range of natural phenomena. Around the time of the composition of the General Scholium, the electric spirit was then the key element of Newton's novel attempt to build a renewed, alchemically based " theory of everything. "