Francis Bacon briefly. Francis Bacon: biography, philosophical teachings

BACON, Francis

The English philosopher, founder of English materialism Francis Bacon was born in London; was the youngest son in the family of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge University for two years, then spent three years in France in the retinue of the English ambassador. After the death of his father in 1579, he entered the Gray's Inn school of barristers (lawyers) to study law. In 1582 he became a barrister, in 1584 he was elected to Parliament and until 1614 he played a prominent role in debates at sessions of the House of Commons. In 1607 he took the position of solicitor general, in 1613 - attorney general; from 1617 Lord Privy Seal, from 1618 - Lord Chancellor. Elevated to knighthood in 1603; Baron of Verulam (1618) and Viscount St. Albany (1621). In 1621, he was brought to trial on charges of bribery, removed from all posts and sentenced to a fine of 40 thousand pounds sterling and imprisonment in the Tower (for as long as the king pleased). Pardoned by the king (he was released from the Tower on the second day, and his fine was forgiven; in 1624 the sentence was completely overturned), Bacon did not return to public service and devoted the last years of his life to scientific and literary work.

Bacon's philosophy developed in the atmosphere of the general scientific and cultural upsurge of European countries, which took the path of capitalist development and the liberation of science from the scholastic shackles of church dogma. Throughout his life, Bacon worked on the grandiose plan for the “Great Restoration of the Sciences.” A general outline of this plan was made by Bacon in 1620 in the preface to the work “New Organon, or True Instructions for the Interpretation of Nature” (“Novum Organum”). The New Organon contained six parts: a general overview of the current state of the sciences, a description of a new method of obtaining true knowledge, a body of empirical data, a discussion of issues to be further investigated, preliminary solutions, and, finally, philosophy itself. Bacon managed to make only sketches of the first two parts.

Science, according to Bacon, should give man power over nature, increase his power and improve his life. From this point of view, he criticized scholasticism and its syllogistic deductive method, to which he contrasted the appeal to experience and its processing by induction, emphasizing the importance of experiment. Developing the rules for applying the inductive method he proposed, Bacon compiled tables of the presence, absence and degrees of various properties in individual objects of a particular class. The mass of facts collected in this case was to form the third part of his work - “Natural and Experimental History”.

Emphasizing the importance of method allowed Bacon to put forward an important principle for pedagogy, according to which the goal of education is not the accumulation of the greatest possible amount of knowledge, but the ability to use methods for acquiring it. Bacon divided all existing and possible sciences according to the three abilities of the human mind: history corresponds to memory, poetry to imagination, philosophy to reason, which includes the doctrine of God, nature and man.

Bacon considered the reason for the delusion of reason to be false ideas - “ghosts” or “idols”, of four types: “ghosts of the race” (idola tribus), rooted in the very nature of the human race and associated with man’s desire to consider nature by analogy with himself; “ghosts of the cave” (idola specus), arising due to the individual characteristics of each person; “market ghosts” (idola fori), generated by an uncritical attitude to popular opinions and incorrect use of words; “ghosts of the theater” (idola theatri), a false perception of reality based on blind faith in authorities and traditional dogmatic systems, similar to the deceptive verisimilitude of theatrical performances. Bacon viewed matter as an objective variety of sensory qualities perceived by man; Bacon's understanding of matter had not yet become mechanistic, like that of G. Galileo, R. Descartes and T. Hobbes.

Bacon's teaching had a huge influence on the subsequent development of science and philosophy, contributed to the formation of the materialism of T. Hobbes, the sensationalism of J. Locke and his followers. Bacon's logical method became the starting point for the development of inductive logic, especially in J. S. Mill. Bacon's call for the experimental study of nature was a stimulus for natural science in the 17th century. and played an important role in the creation of scientific organizations (for example,

Introduction

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is rightfully considered the founder of modern philosophy. He came from a noble family that occupied a prominent place in English political life (his father was Lord Privy Seal). Graduated from Cambridge University. The learning process, marked by a scholastic approach that consisted of reading and analyzing primarily the authorities of the past, did not satisfy Bacon.

This training did not give anything new, and in particular, in the knowledge of nature. Already at that time, he came to the conviction that new knowledge about nature must be obtained by studying, first of all, nature itself.

He was a diplomat as part of the British mission in Paris. After his father's death he returned to London, became a lawyer, and was a member of the House of Commons. He makes a brilliant career at the court of King James I.

Since 1619, F. Bacon became Lord Chancellor of England. After James I was forced to return Parliament due to non-payment of taxes by the residents of the country, members of Parliament took “revenge”, in particular, Bacon was accused of bribery and in 1621 was removed from political activities. Lord Bacon's political career was over; he retired from his previous affairs and devoted himself to scientific work until his death.

One group of Bacon's works consists of works related to the formation of science and scientific knowledge.

These are, first of all, treatises related in one way or another to his project of the “Great Restoration of the Sciences” (due to lack of time or other reasons, this project was not completed).

This project was created by 1620, but only its second part, dedicated to the new inductive method, was fully implemented, which was written and published under the title “New Organon” also in 1620. In 1623, his work “On dignity and enhancement of sciences."

1. F. Bacon - founder of experimental science and philosophy of modern times

F. Bacon takes inventory of all areas of consciousness and activity.

The general tendency of Bacon's philosophical thinking is unambiguously materialistic. However, Bacon's materialism is limited historically and epistemologically.

The development of modern science (and the natural and exact sciences) was only in its infancy and was completely influenced by the Renaissance concept of man and the human mind. Therefore, Bacon’s materialism is devoid of deep structure and is in many ways more of a declaration.

Bacon's philosophy is based on the objective needs of society and expresses the interests of progressive social forces of that time. His emphasis on empirical research and knowledge of nature logically follows from the practice of the then progressive social classes, in particular the emerging bourgeoisie.

Bacon rejects philosophy as contemplation and presents it as a science about the real world, based on experimental knowledge. This is confirmed by the title of one of his studies - “Natural and experimental description of the foundation of philosophy.”

By his position, he, in fact, expresses a new starting point and a new basis for all knowledge.

Bacon paid special attention to the problems of science, knowledge and cognition. He saw the world of science as the main means of solving social problems and contradictions of the society of that time.

Bacon is a prophet and enthusiast of technological progress. He raises the question of organizing science and putting it at the service of man. This focus on the practical significance of knowledge brings him closer to the philosophers of the Renaissance (as opposed to the scholastics). And science is judged by its results. “Fruits are the guarantor and witness of the truth of philosophy.”

Bacon characterizes the meaning, calling and tasks of science very clearly in the introduction to the “Great Restoration of the Sciences”: “And finally, I would like to call on all people to remember the true goals of science, so that they do not engage in it for the sake of their spirit, not for the sake of some learned disputes, nor for the sake of neglecting others, nor for the sake of self-interest and glory, nor in order to achieve power, nor for some other low intentions, but so that life itself would benefit and succeed from it.” Both its direction and working methods are subject to this calling of science.

He appreciates the virtues ancient culture, at the same time, they realize how superior their achievements of modern science are. As much as he values ​​antiquity, he values ​​scholasticism just as low. He rejects speculative scholastic disputes and focuses on knowledge of the real, really existing world.

The main tools of this knowledge are, according to Bacon, feelings, experience, experiment and what follows from them.

Natural science according to Bacon is the great mother of all sciences. She was undeservedly humiliated to the position of a servant. The task is to return independence and dignity to the sciences. “Philosophy must enter into a legal marriage with science, and only then will it be able to bear children.”

A new cognitive situation has emerged. It is characterized by the following: “The pile of experiments has grown to infinity.” Bacon poses the following problems:

a) deep transformation of the body of accumulated knowledge, its rational organization and streamlining;

b) development of methods for obtaining new knowledge.

He implements the first in his work “On the Dignity and Augmentation of Sciences” - the classification of knowledge. The second is in the New Organon.

The task of organizing knowledge. Bacon bases the classification of knowledge on three human powers of discrimination: memory, imagination, and reason. These abilities correspond to areas of activity - history, poetry, philosophy and science. The results of abilities correspond to objects (except for poetry, imagination cannot have an object, and she is its product). The object of history is single events. Natural history deals with events in nature, while civil history deals with events in society.

According to Bacon, philosophy deals not with individuals and not with sensory impressions of objects, but with abstract concepts derived from them, the connection and separation of which on the basis of the laws of nature and the facts of reality itself it deals with. Philosophy belongs to the realm of reason and essentially includes the content of all theoretical science.

The objects of philosophy are God, nature and man. Accordingly, it is divided into natural theology, natural philosophy and the doctrine of man.

Philosophy is knowledge of the general. He considers the problem of God as an object of knowledge within the framework of the concept of two truths. The Holy Scriptures contain moral standards. Theology, which studies God, has a heavenly origin, in contrast to philosophy, whose object is nature and man. Natural religion can have nature as its object. Within the framework of natural theology (God is the object of attention), philosophy can play a certain role.

In addition to divine philosophy, there is natural philosophy (natural). She breaks down into theoretical(exploring the cause of things and relying on “luminous” experiences) and practical philosophy (which carries out “fruitful” experiments and creates artificial things).

Theoretical philosophy breaks down into physics and metaphysics. The basis of this division is the doctrine of Aristotle’s 4 causes. Bacon believes that physics is the study of material and moving causes. Metaphysics studies formal cause. But there is no target cause in nature, only in human activity. The deep essence consists of forms, their study is a matter of metaphysics.

Practical philosophy is divided into mechanics (research in physics) and natural philosophy (it is based on the knowledge of forms). The product of natural magic is, for example, what is depicted in “New Atlantis” - “spare” organs for humans, etc. In modern language, we are talking about high technologies – High Tech.

He considered mathematics to be a great application to natural philosophy, both theoretical and practical.

Strictly speaking, mathematics even forms a part of metaphysics, for quantity, which is its subject, applied to matter, is a kind of measure of nature and a condition for the multitude of natural phenomena, and therefore one of its essential forms.

Truly, knowledge about nature is the main all-absorbing subject of Bacon’s attention, and no matter what philosophical questions he touched on, the study of nature, natural philosophy, remained the true science for him.

Bacon also includes the doctrine of man as philosophy. There is also a division of areas: man as an individual and an object of anthropology, as a citizen - an object of civil philosophy.

Bacon's idea of ​​the soul and its abilities constitute the central content of his philosophy of man.

Francis Bacon distinguished two souls in man - the rational and the sensual. The first is divinely inspired (an object of revealed knowledge), the second is similar to the soul of animals (it is an object of natural scientific research): the first comes from the “spirit of God”, the second - from a set of material elements and is an organ of the rational soul.

He leaves the entire teaching about the divinely inspired soul - about its substance and nature, whether it is innate or introduced from without - to the competence of religion.

“And although all such questions could receive a deeper and more thorough study in philosophy compared to the state in which they are currently found, nevertheless, we consider it more correct to transfer these questions to the consideration and definition of religion, because otherwise, in most cases they would have received an erroneous decision under the influence of those errors that the data of sensory perceptions can give rise to in philosophers.”

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans; January 22, 1561 - April 9, 1626. English philosopher, historian, politician, founder of empiricism.

In 1584, at the age of 23, he was elected to parliament. From 1617 Lord Privy Seal, then Lord Chancellor; Baron of Verulam and Viscount of St. Albans. In 1621 he was put on trial on charges of bribery, convicted and removed from all positions. He was later pardoned by the king, but did not return to public service and devoted the last years of his life to scientific and literary work.

Bacon began his professional career as a lawyer, but later became widely known as a lawyer-philosopher and defender of the scientific revolution. His works are the foundation and popularization of the inductive methodology of scientific inquiry, often called Bacon's method. Induction gains knowledge from the world around us through experiment, observation, and testing hypotheses. In the context of their time, such methods were used by alchemists. Bacon outlined his approach to the problems of science in the treatise “New Organon”, published in 1620. In this treatise, he proclaimed the goal of science to be an increase in human power over nature, which he defined as soulless material, the purpose of which is to be used by man.

Bacon created a two-letter cipher, now called the Bacon cipher.

In general, Bacon considered the great dignity of science almost self-evident and expressed this in his famous aphorism "Knowledge is power"(Latin: Scientia potentia est).

However, many attacks have been made on science. After analyzing them, Bacon came to the conclusion that God did not prohibit knowledge of nature. On the contrary, he gave man a mind that thirsts for knowledge of the Universe. People just need to understand that there are two types of knowledge: 1) knowledge of good and evil, 2) knowledge of things created by God.

The knowledge of good and evil is forbidden to people. God gives it to them through the Bible. And man, on the contrary, must cognize created things with the help of his mind. This means that science must take its rightful place in the “kingdom of man.” The purpose of science is to increase the strength and power of people, to provide them with a rich and dignified life.

Bacon died after catching a cold during one of his physical experiments. Already seriously ill, in his last letter to one of his friends, Lord Arendelle, he triumphantly reports that this experiment was a success. The scientist was confident that science should give man power over nature and thereby improve his life.

Pointing to the deplorable state of science, Bacon said that until now discoveries had been made by chance, not methodically. There would be many more of them if researchers were armed with the right method. Method is the path, the main means of research. Even a lame man walking along the road will overtake a healthy man running off-road.

The research method developed by Francis Bacon is an early precursor to the scientific method. The method was proposed in Bacon's Novum Organum (New Organon) and was intended to replace the methods that were proposed in Aristotle's Organum almost 2 millennia ago.

According to Bacon, scientific knowledge should be based on induction and experiment.

Induction can be complete (perfect) or incomplete. Complete induction means the regular repetition and exhaustibility of any property of an object in the experience under consideration. Inductive generalizations start from the assumption that this will be the case in all similar cases. In this garden, all lilacs are white - a conclusion from annual observations during their flowering period.

Incomplete induction includes generalizations made on the basis of studying not all cases, but only some (conclusion by analogy), because, as a rule, the number of all cases is practically unlimited, and theoretically it is impossible to prove their infinite number: all swans are white for us reliably until we will not see a black individual. This conclusion is always probabilistic.

Trying to create a “true induction,” Bacon looked not only for facts that confirmed a certain conclusion, but also for facts that refuted it. He thus armed natural science with two means of investigation: enumeration and exclusion. Moreover, it is the exceptions that matter most. Using his method, for example, he established that the “form” of heat is the movement of the smallest particles of the body.

So, in his theory of knowledge, Bacon strictly pursued the idea that true knowledge follows from sensory experience. This philosophical position is called empiricism. Bacon was not only its founder, but also the most consistent empiricist.

Francis Bacon divided the sources of human errors that stand in the way of knowledge into four groups, which he called “ghosts” or “idols” (lat. idola). These are “ghosts of the family”, “ghosts of the cave”, “ghosts of the square” and “ghosts of the theater”.

1. “Ghosts of the race” stem from human nature itself; they do not depend either on culture or on a person’s individuality. “The human mind is like an uneven mirror, which, mixing its nature with the nature of things, reflects things in a distorted and disfigured form.”

2. “Ghosts of the Cave” are individual errors of perception, both congenital and acquired. “After all, in addition to the errors inherent in the human race, everyone has their own special cave, which weakens and distorts the light of nature.”

3. “Ghosts of the square (market)” - a consequence of the social nature of man, - communication and the use of language in communication. “People unite through speech. Words are set according to the understanding of the crowd. Therefore, a bad and absurd statement of words besieges the mind in a surprising way.”

4. “Ghosts of the theater” are false ideas about the structure of reality acquired by a person from other people. “At the same time, we mean here not only general philosophical teachings, but also numerous principles and axioms of the sciences, which received force as a result of tradition, faith and carelessness.”

The most significant followers of the empirical line in modern philosophy: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume - in England; Etienne Condillac, Claude Helvetius, Paul Holbach - in France. The Slovak philosopher Jan Bayer was also a preacher of F. Bacon's empiricism.

Introduction

4.Bacon's social utopia

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is rightfully considered the founder of modern philosophy. He came from a noble family that occupied a prominent place in English political life (his father was Lord Privy Seal). Graduated from Cambridge University. The learning process, marked by a scholastic approach that consisted of reading and analyzing primarily the authorities of the past, did not satisfy Bacon.

This training did not give anything new, and in particular, in the knowledge of nature. Already at that time, he came to the conviction that new knowledge about nature must be obtained by studying, first of all, nature itself.

He was a diplomat as part of the British mission in Paris. After his father's death he returned to London, became a lawyer, and was a member of the House of Commons. He makes a brilliant career at the court of King James I.

Since 1619, F. Bacon became Lord Chancellor of England. After James I was forced to return Parliament due to non-payment of taxes by the residents of the country, members of Parliament took “revenge”, in particular, Bacon was accused of bribery and in 1621 was removed from political activities. Lord Bacon's political career was over; he retired from his previous affairs and devoted himself to scientific work until his death.

One group of Bacon's works consists of works related to the formation of science and scientific knowledge.

These are, first of all, treatises related in one way or another to his project of the “Great Restoration of the Sciences” (due to lack of time or other reasons, this project was not completed).

This project was created by 1620, but only its second part, dedicated to the new inductive method, was fully implemented, which was written and published under the title “New Organon” also in 1620. In 1623, his work “On dignity and enhancement of sciences."

1. F. Bacon - founder of experimental science and philosophy of modern times

F. Bacon takes inventory of all areas of consciousness and activity.

The general tendency of Bacon's philosophical thinking is unambiguously materialist. However, Bacon's materialism is limited historically and epistemologically.

The development of modern science (and the natural and exact sciences) was only in its infancy and was completely influenced by the Renaissance concept of man and the human mind. Therefore, Bacon’s materialism is devoid of deep structure and is in many ways more of a declaration.

Bacon's philosophy is based on the objective needs of society and expresses the interests of progressive social forces of that time. His emphasis on empirical research and knowledge of nature logically follows from the practice of the then progressive social classes, in particular the emerging bourgeoisie.

Bacon rejects philosophy as contemplation and presents it as a science about the real world, based on experimental knowledge. This is confirmed by the title of one of his studies - “Natural and experimental description of the foundation of philosophy.”

By his position, he, in fact, expresses a new starting point and a new basis for all knowledge.

Bacon paid special attention to the problems of science, knowledge and cognition. He saw the world of science as the main means of solving social problems and contradictions of the society of that time.

Bacon is a prophet and enthusiast of technological progress. He raises the question of organizing science and putting it at the service of man. This focus on the practical significance of knowledge brings him closer to the philosophers of the Renaissance (as opposed to the scholastics). And science is judged by its results. “Fruits are the guarantor and witness of the truth of philosophy.”

Bacon characterizes the meaning, calling and tasks of science very clearly in the introduction to the “Great Restoration of the Sciences”: “And finally, I would like to call on all people to remember the true goals of science, so that they do not engage in it for the sake of their spirit, not for the sake of some learned disputes, nor for the sake of neglecting others, nor for the sake of self-interest and glory, nor in order to achieve power, nor for some other low intentions, but so that life itself would benefit and succeed from it.” Both its direction and working methods are subject to this calling of science.

He highly appreciates the merits of ancient culture, but at the same time he realizes how superior they are to the achievements of modern science. As much as he values ​​antiquity, he values ​​scholasticism just as low. He rejects speculative scholastic disputes and focuses on knowledge of the real, really existing world.

The main tools of this knowledge are, according to Bacon, feelings, experience, experiment and what follows from them.

Natural science according to Bacon is the great mother of all sciences. She was undeservedly humiliated to the position of a servant. The task is to return independence and dignity to the sciences. “Philosophy must enter into a legal marriage with science, and only then will it be able to bear children.”

A new cognitive situation has emerged. It is characterized by the following: “The pile of experiments has grown to infinity.” Bacon poses the following problems:

a) deep transformation of the body of accumulated knowledge, its rational organization and streamlining;

b) development of methods for obtaining new knowledge.

He implements the first in his work “On the Dignity and Augmentation of Sciences” - the classification of knowledge. The second is in the New Organon.

The task of organizing knowledge. Bacon bases the classification of knowledge on three human powers of discrimination: memory, imagination, and reason. These abilities correspond to areas of activity - history, poetry, philosophy and science. The results of abilities correspond to objects (except for poetry, imagination cannot have an object, and she is its product). The object of history is single events. Natural history deals with events in nature, while civil history deals with events in society.

According to Bacon, philosophy deals not with individuals and not with sensory impressions of objects, but with abstract concepts derived from them, the connection and separation of which on the basis of the laws of nature and the facts of reality itself it deals with. Philosophy belongs to the realm of reason and essentially includes the content of all theoretical science.

The objects of philosophy are God, nature and man. Accordingly, it is divided into natural theology, natural philosophy and the doctrine of man.

Philosophy is knowledge of the general. He considers the problem of God as an object of knowledge within the framework of the concept of two truths. The Holy Scriptures contain moral standards. Theology, which studies God, has a heavenly origin, in contrast to philosophy, whose object is nature and man. Natural religion can have nature as its object. Within the framework of natural theology (God is the object of attention), philosophy can play a certain role.

In addition to divine philosophy, there is natural philosophy (natural). It breaks down into theoretical philosophy (which studies the cause of things and relies on “luminous” experiences) and practical philosophy (which carries out “fruitful” experiments and creates artificial things).

Theoretical philosophy breaks down into physics and metaphysics. The basis of this division is the doctrine of Aristotle’s 4 causes. Bacon believes that physics is the study of material and moving causes. Metaphysics studies formal cause. But there is no target cause in nature, only in human activity. The deep essence consists of forms, their study is a matter of metaphysics.

Practical philosophy is divided into mechanics (research in physics) and natural philosophy (it is based on the knowledge of forms). The product of natural magic is, for example, what is depicted in “New Atlantis” - “spare” organs for humans, etc. In modern language, we are talking about high technologies – High Tech.

He considered mathematics to be a great application to natural philosophy, both theoretical and practical.

Strictly speaking, mathematics even forms a part of metaphysics, for quantity, which is its subject, applied to matter, is a kind of measure of nature and a condition for the multitude of natural phenomena, and therefore one of its essential forms.

Truly, knowledge about nature is the main all-absorbing subject of Bacon’s attention, and no matter what philosophical questions he touched on, the study of nature, natural philosophy, remained the true science for him.

Bacon also includes the doctrine of man as philosophy. There is also a division of areas: man as an individual and an object of anthropology, as a citizen - an object of civil philosophy.

Bacon's idea of ​​the soul and its abilities constitute the central content of his philosophy of man.

Francis Bacon distinguished two souls in man - the rational and the sensual. The first is divinely inspired (an object of revealed knowledge), the second is similar to the soul of animals (it is an object of natural scientific research): the first comes from the “spirit of God,” the second comes from a set of material elements and is an organ of the rational soul.

He leaves the entire teaching about the divinely inspired soul - about its substance and nature, whether it is innate or introduced from without - to the competence of religion.

“And although all such questions could receive a deeper and more thorough study in philosophy compared to the state in which they are currently found, nevertheless, we consider it more correct to transfer these questions to the consideration and definition of religion, because otherwise, in most cases they would have received an erroneous decision under the influence of those errors that the data of sensory perceptions can give rise to in philosophers.”

2. Bacon on the nature of human error

The task of equipping a person with methods for obtaining new knowledge is considered by Bacon to be much more important. He gives a solution to it in his work “New Organon”. A significant obstacle to the development of real knowledge are prejudices, ingrained, ingrained, or even innate ideas and fictions, which contribute to the fact that the world in our consciousness is not fully adequately reflected.

Bacon calls these representations idols. The doctrine of idols, according to Bacon, is an important means of overcoming these ideas. About the relationship of the science of idols to new logic and a new method of knowledge, he says: “The science of idols relates to the explanation of nature in the same way as the science of sophistical proofs relates to ordinary logic.”

Bacon presupposes the problem of cleansing the human mind from the following “idols” (false ideas, ghosts):

Idol of the family

These are prejudices rooted in the nature of man as a species being, in the imperfection of the senses, in the limitations of the mind. Sensations deceive us; they have boundaries beyond which objects cease to be perceived by us. It is naive to be guided only by sensations. Reason helps, but the mind often gives a distorted picture of nature (likens it to a distorted mirror). The mind attributes its properties (anthropomorphism) and goals (teleology) to nature. Hasty generalizations (eg circular orbits).

The idols of the race are not only natural, but also innate. They proceed from the natural imperfection of the human mind, which manifests itself in the fact that it “presupposes greater order and balance in things than what is in them.”

The idol of the race is the most irremovable according to Bacon. It is hardly possible to free oneself from one’s nature and not add one’s nature to ideas. The path to overcoming the idols of the race lies in realizing this natural property of the human mind and consistently applying the rules of new induction in the process of cognition (this is necessary, of course, the main and most reliable means for overcoming other idols).

Cave Idol

If the idols of the race arise from natural defects of the human mind, which are more or less general, then the idols of the cave are also caused by the innate defects of the human mind, but of an individual nature.

"The idols of the cave are the idols of man as an individual. For each individual, in addition to the errors generated by the nature of man as a species) has his own individual cave or lair. This cave refracts and distorts the light of nature, on the one hand, because everyone has a certain, own nature , on the other hand, because everyone had a different upbringing and met different people.

Also because everyone read only certain books, revered and adored different authorities, and finally, because his impressions were different from others, according to what kind of souls they had - biased and full of prejudices or calm and balanced souls, as well as for other reasons of the same kind. Likewise, the human spirit itself (since it is contained in individual people) is very changeable, confused, as if random." The human mind is the mind of a being belonging to the human race; but at the same time possessing individual characteristics: body, character, education, interest "Each person looks at the world as if from his own cave. “Unnoticed, passions stain and spoil the mind.” It is easier to get rid of this “idol” than the first one - collective experience neutralizes individual deviations.

Market idol

Its danger lies in its reliance on collective experience. An idol is a product of human communication, mainly verbal. "There are, however, such idols that arise through mutual communication. We call them market idols because they arose through mutual agreement in society. People agree with the help of speech; words are determined by common understanding. Bad and incorrect choice of words significantly interferes with the mind Neither definition nor explanation can correct these disturbances.

Words simply rape the mind and lead everyone into confusion, and lead people to countless unnecessary disputes and ideas. People believe that their mind rules over words. But they involuntarily penetrate into consciousness."

Incorrect use of words is harmful. Mistaking words for things, people make mistakes. Here his criticism is directed against the scholastics. You can overcome the idol by realizing that words are signs of things. Realizing that there are single things, that is, you need to take a position of nominalism. Words do not represent reality, but only the generalizing activity of the mind.

Bacon pays more attention, but does not find (except for the consistent implementation of the rules of new induction) an effective way to overcome them. Therefore, he identifies market idols as the most harmful.

Theater Idol

A product of collective experience. If a person has blind faith in authorities, especially the ancient ones. The older it is, the greater the illusion of authority. Like actors on a stage under the spotlight, ancient thinkers are in the aura of their glory. This is the result of “vision aberration.” And they are people just like readers. We must understand that the more ancient, the more naive the thinker, because he knew less.

“These are idols that have moved into human thoughts from various philosophical teachings. I call them idols of the theater, because all traditional and hitherto invented philosophical systems are, in my opinion, like theatrical games that created worlds imagined as if in the theater. "I am not talking here about current philosophies and schools, nor about those old ones, because many more such games can be added up and played together. Therefore, the true causes of errors, completely different from each other, are more or less almost the same."

3. The doctrine of the method of empiricism and the basic rules of the inductive method

Bacon's work is characterized by a certain approach to the method of human cognition and thinking. For him, the starting point of any cognitive activity is, first of all, feelings.

Therefore, he is often called the founder" empiricism" - a direction that builds its epistemological premises primarily on sensory cognition and experience. Bacon himself speaks about this: “I do not overestimate the direct and actual sensory perception, but I act in such a way that the senses evaluate only the experiment, and the experiment itself speaks about things , because the subtlety of experience far exceeds the subtlety of the senses themselves, perhaps armed with exceptional instruments.”

Therefore, it would be more accurate to define Bacon's philosophy (and not just the theory of knowledge) as empirical. Empirics - experience based on experiment (and not isolated sensory perception) - is for him the starting point of a new scientific method, which he characterizes as “the science of the better and more perfect use of the mind in the study of things and of the true aids of the mind that knows them.” in order for the knowing mind to rise (as far as existing conditions and mortality allow a person) and so that it has the ability to overcome what in nature is difficult to access and dark.”

Francis Bacon's main merit is the development of methodology, that is, the doctrine of method. He developed a new method, contrasting it with scholasticism, which he rejected due to its sterility: the syllogistic statement does not add anything new to what was already expressed in the premises. You won't get new knowledge that way. And the premises themselves are the result of hasty generalizations, although not all of them.

Bacon's method is an empirical-inductive method of obtaining true generalizations from experience.

According to Bacon, the object of knowledge is nature; the task of cognition is to obtain true knowledge; the goal of knowledge is domination over nature; method is a means of solving cognitive problems. The starting point of the method is experience. But he shouldn't be blind. You don't need a ton of experience and knowledge. The other extreme is the “scholastic’s web,” which he weaves from himself. Experience must be complemented by rational organization. The researcher should be like a bee collecting nectar and processing it into honey. That is, to rationally comprehend and process experimental knowledge.

Bacon considers induction to be the main working method of his logic. In this he sees a guarantee against shortcomings not only in logic, but in all knowledge in general.

He characterizes it as follows: “By induction I understand a form of proof that looks closely at feelings, strives to comprehend the natural character of things, strives for actions and almost merges with them.” Induction is the true method of rational understanding - from the particular to the general, a continuous, thorough generalization without leaps.

He rejects that induction which, as he says, is carried out by simple enumeration. Such induction "leads to an indefinite conclusion, it is exposed to the dangers that threaten it from the opposite cases, if it pays attention only to what is familiar to it and does not come to any conclusion."

Therefore, he emphasizes the need to rework or, more precisely, develop the inductive method: “The sciences need, however, forms of induction that will analyze experience and distinguish individual elements from each other and only then, when responsibly excluded and rejected, will they come to a convincing conclusion.” .

Under Bacon, the concept of induction was reduced to complete and incomplete (that is, incomplete coverage of experimental data). Bacon does not accept the extension of induction through enumeration, since only what confirms the fact is taken into account. The new thing that Bacon introduced is that it is necessary to take into account “negative instances” (according to Bacon), that is, facts that refute our generalizations, falsify our inductive generalizations. Only then does true induction take place.

We must look for cases that expose the generalization as hasty. What should be done for this? We must treat experimental knowledge not as the result of passive knowledge, but we must actively intervene in the process being studied, create artificial conditions that will determine which circumstances are responsible for the result. In other words, we need experimentation, not just observation. “If nature shuts itself up and does not reveal its secrets, it must be tortured.”

Secondly, the condition for true induction is analysis. That is, “anatomizing” nature in order to reveal its laws. We have already encountered analytical orientation in Galileo. But Bacon does not go as far as Galileo. In Galileo, the analysis was reduced to only 4 mechanical properties. And Bacon reduces it not to quantitative, but to qualitative knowledge. According to Bacon, the combination of simple forms constitutes the deep essence of natural things. The one who has comprehended it has natural magic. He relates knowledge of simple forms to knowledge of the alphabet. His qualitative reductionism has Aristotelian roots, but falls short of the mechanistic reductionism of Galileo. The position of qualitative reduction brings him closer to natural philosophers. But in the field of method, Bacon is the founder of modern philosophy.

Baconian analysis is only the initial stage of induction. Based on the analysis, it is necessary to make generalizations leading to knowledge of the causes. The results should be organized in tables:

1. Table of positive authorities. Bacon called it the table of essence and presence (presence). In it "one should present to the mind a review of all known cases which agree in this natural property, although their substances are not similar. Such a review should be made historically, without unnecessary speculation or detail." The table gives a relatively complete overview of the main manifestations of the properties under study.

2. Table of negative instances, which Bacon defines as a table of deviations and absence of presence. The table is constructed in such a way that for every positive case identified there is a corresponding (at least one) negative case.

It contains "a review of cases in which a given natural property is not present because form cannot be where the natural property is not present."

3. Table of comparison of degrees of manifestation. Its purpose is “to give the mind an overview of the cases in which the natural property being examined is contained in a greater or lesser degree, depending on whether it decreases or increases, and to make this comparison on various “subjects.” The methodological value of this table is greatest depends on the level of sensory knowledge and experimental methods, therefore it contains the greatest number of inaccuracies.

Comparison of data in these three tables, according to Bacon, can lead to certain knowledge, in particular descriptive cases can confirm or refute hypotheses regarding the property under study.

These cases are included in the table of prerogative instances, which serve as the basis for the induction itself.

4. Table of prerogative instances - table of privileged cases. Here lies the opportunity to test the hypothesis for truth.

Bacon illustrated his method by studying the properties of heat. This illustration also shows the shortcomings of his method.

The shortcomings of Bacon's methodological approaches were due to his general philosophical orientation. The design of his “tables” presupposes an understanding of the world as material, but essentially consisting of a finite number of basic parts, qualitatively and quantitatively limited. And although, for example, in understanding the relationship between matter and motion, Bacon comes to the solution to their actual internal connection, his materialism represents only a certain stage preceding the formation of mechanical-materialistic philosophy and natural science of the New Age.

Thus, we can confidently call Francis Bacon one of the founders of modern experimental science.

But even more important, perhaps, is that the pioneer of natural scientific methodology did not treat his teaching as the ultimate truth. He directly and frankly brought him face to face with the future. “We do not claim, however, that nothing can be added to this,” wrote Bacon. On the contrary, considering the mind not only in its own ability, but also in its connection with things, we must establish that the art of discovery can grow with discoveries “

4. Bacon's social utopia

In 1627, “New Atlantis” was published - this work reveals the most important feature of his philosophical position. "New Atlantis" is a social utopia in which Bacon expresses his ideas about the optimal structure of society.

The genre of the book is reminiscent of T. More's Utopia. But if More and Campanella pay attention to the question of what will happen if there is no private property, then Bacon is not interested in this question at all. His ideal society on the legendary island of Bensalem is, in fact, an idealization of the then English society.

There is a division between rich and poor; the Christian religion plays a significant role in the lives of people on the island. And although Bacon in his utopia condemns certain negative phenomena typical of England at that time, he does not touch upon the essence of social relations, and in most cases condemns the violation of moral norms recognized by society. So, in Bensalem, for example, frivolous living is condemned, theft and any offenses leading to violation of the law are strictly prosecuted, there is no bribery of officials, etc.

The central point of the book is the description of the House of Solomon. This is a kind of museum of science and technology. There the islanders study nature in order to put it at the service of man. Bacon's technical imagination turned out to be quite non-trivial - artificial snow, artificially induced rain, lightning. The synthesis of living beings and the cultivation of human organs are demonstrated there. Future microscope and other technical devices.

Bacon had enough political and legal experience to become convinced of the need for agreement between science and government. That is why in “New Atlantis” the “house of Solomon” as a center for the development of science has such an exceptional position.

The advice and instructions he issues are mandatory for the citizens of this utopian state (from the point of view of social coercion) and are taken seriously and with respect.

In connection with the high appreciation of science in utopian Bensalem, Bacon shows how the science developed by the "house of Solomon" differs (both in its content and in terms of methods) from the European science of his time. Thus, this utopia affirms Bacon's view of science as the most important form of human activity.

The criticality of his social utopia is not directed against the prevailing social relations, but is aimed at their “improvement”, clearing them of the negative phenomena that accompanied (naturally and necessarily) the development of capitalist relations of production.

The significance of Bacon's philosophy is not determined by his social views, which, despite their relative progressiveness, do not transcend the boundaries of the era; it consists primarily of a critique of the speculative, contemplative approach to the world characteristic of late medieval philosophy.

By this, Bacon significantly contributed to the formation of philosophical thinking of the New Age.

Conclusion

At least three ideological factors determined the formation and character of the new European philosophy - the revival of ancient values, religious reformation and the development of natural science.

And the influence of all of them can be clearly seen in the views of Bacon, the last major philosopher of the Renaissance and the founder of modern philosophy. His philosophy was a continuation of the naturalism of the Renaissance, which he at the same time freed from pantheism, mysticism and various superstitions. A continuation and at the same time its completion.

Having proclaimed the great importance of natural science and technical inventions for human power in practice, Bacon believed that this idea of ​​his philosophy was destined not just for a long life of an academically recognized and canonized literary heritage, another opinion among the many already invented by mankind.

He believed that over time this idea would become one of the constructive principles of all human life, to which “the fate of the human race will give completion, moreover, in a way that, perhaps, for people, given the current state of things and minds, is not easy to comprehend and measure.” In a sense, he was right.

Bacon's activities as a thinker and writer were aimed at promoting science, indicating its paramount importance in the life of mankind, and developing a new holistic view of its structure, classification, goals and methods of research. He was engaged in science as its Lord Chancellor, developing its general strategy, determining the general routes for its advancement and the principles of organization in a poor society.

Reflecting today on the legacy of Francis Bacon, we find in it a variety of elements and layers - innovative and traditionalist, scientific and poetic, wise and naive, those whose roots go back centuries, and those that extend their evergreen shoots into other worlds through time social structures, problems and attitudes.

Literature

Blinnikov L.V. Great philosophers. Dictionary-reference book. - M.: Logos, 1999.

Bacon F. New Organon // Op. In 2 volumes - M.: Mysl, 1972. T.2.

History of philosophy: West-Russia-East. Book 2. - M.: Greco-Latin cabinet Yu.A. Shichalina, 1996.

World of Philosophy. - M.: Politizdat, 1991.

Sokolov V.V. European philosophy of the XV-XVII centuries. - M.: Higher School, 1996.

Reale J., Antiseri D. Western philosophy from its origins to the present day. T.3. New time. - St. Petersburg: TK Petropolis LLP, 1996.

State budget educational institution higher vocational education

“Krasnoyarsk State Medical University named after Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky"

Ministry of Health and Social Development Russian Federation

In the discipline "Philosophy"

Theme: "Francis Bacon"

Executor

First year student of group 102

Faculty of Clinical Psychology KrasSMU

Chernomura Polina.

Krasnoyarsk 2013

Introduction

New times are a time of great efforts and significant discoveries that were not appreciated by contemporaries, and became understandable only when their results eventually became one of the decisive factors in the life of human society. This is the time of the birth of the foundations of modern natural science, the prerequisites for the accelerated development of technology, which will later lead society to an economic revolution.

The philosophy of Francis Bacon is the philosophy of the English Renaissance. She is multifaceted. Bacon combines both innovation and tradition, science and literary creativity, based on the philosophy of the Middle Ages.

Biography

Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561 in London at York House on the Strand. In the family of one of the highest dignitaries at the court of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Nicholas Bacon. Bacon's mother, Anna Cook, came from the family of Sir Anthony Cook, the tutor of King Edward VI, was well educated, owned foreign languages, was interested in religion, translated theological treatises and sermons into English.

In 1573, Francis entered Trinity College, Cambridge University. Three years later, Bacon, as part of the English mission, went to Paris, carried out a number of diplomatic assignments, which gave him a wealth of experience in getting acquainted with politics, court and religious life not only in France, but also in other countries of the continent - the Italian principalities, Germany, Spain, Poland, Denmark and Sweden, which resulted in his notes “On the State of Europe”. In 1579, due to the death of his father, he was forced to return to England. As the youngest son in the family, he receives a modest inheritance and is forced to consider his future position.

The first step in Bacon's independent activity was jurisprudence. In 1586 he became the elder of the legal corporation. But jurisprudence did not become Francis's main subject of interest. In 1593, Bacon was elected to the House of Commons of Middlesex County, where he gained fame as an orator. Initially, he adhered to the views of the opposition in protest about an increase in taxes, then he became a supporter of the government. In 1597, the first work was published that brought Bacon wide fame - a collection of short sketches, or essays containing reflections on moral or political topics 1 - "Experiments or Instructions", belong to the best fruits that by God's grace my pen could bear "2. The treatise “On the meaning and success of knowledge, divine and human” dates back to 1605.

Bacon's rise as a court politician came after the death of Elizabeth, at the court of James I Stuart. Since 1606, Bacon has held a number of high government positions. Of these, such as full-time Queen's Counsel, senior Queen's Counsel.

In England, the time of absolutist rule of James I was coming: in 1614 he dissolved parliament and until 1621 he ruled alone. During these years, feudalism worsened and changes in domestic and foreign policy occurred, which led the country to revolution after twenty-five years. Needing devoted advisers, the king brought Bacon especially close to him.

In 1616, Bacon became a member of the Privy Council, and in 1617 - Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In 1618, Bacon was made Lord, High Chancellor and Peer of England, Baron of Verulam, and from 1621, Viscount of St. Albanian.

When the king convenes parliament in 1621, an investigation begins into the corruption of officials. Bacon, appearing in court, admitted his guilt. The peers condemned Bacon to imprisonment in the Tower, but the king overturned the court's decision.

Retired from politics, Bacon devoted himself to scientific and philosophical research. In 1620, Bacon published his main philosophical work, The New Organon, intended as the second part of the Great Restoration of the Sciences.

In 1623, the extensive work “On the Dignity of the Augmentation of the Sciences” was published - the first part of the “Great Restoration of the Sciences”. Bacon also tried the pen in the fashionable genre in the 17th century. philosophical utopia - writes “New Atlantis”. Among other works of the outstanding English thinker: “Thoughts and Observations”, “On the Wisdom of the Ancients”, “On Heaven”, “On Causes and Beginnings”, “The History of the Winds”, “The History of Life and Death”, “The History of Henry VII”, etc. .

During his last experiment in preserving chicken meat by freezing it, Bacon caught a bad cold. Francis Bacon died on April 9, 1626 in the house of the Count of Arondel in Guyget.1

Human and nature. The Central Idea of ​​Francis Bacon's Philosophy

Appeal to Nature, the desire to penetrate into it becomes the general slogan of the era, an expression of the hidden spirit of the time. Discussions about “natural” religion, “natural” law, “natural” morality are theoretical reflections of the persistent desire to return all human life to Nature. And these same trends are proclaimed by the philosophy of Francis Bacon. “Man, the servant and interpreter of Nature, does and understands exactly as much as he embraces in the order of Nature; beyond this he does not know and cannot do anything.”1. This statement reflects the essence of Bacon's ontology.

Bacon's activities as a whole were aimed at promoting science, indicating its paramount importance in the life of mankind, and developing a new holistic view of its structure, classification, goals and methods of research.

The purpose of scientific knowledge is invention and discovery. The purpose of inventions is human benefit, satisfying needs and improving people's lives, increasing the potential of its energy, increasing human power over nature. Science is a means, not an end in itself, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, wisdom for the sake of wisdom. The reason that science has so far made little progress is the dominance of incorrect criteria and assessments of what their achievements consist of. Man is the master of nature. “Nature is conquered only by submission to it, and what appears to be the cause in contemplation is the rule in action.” To subjugate nature, a person must study its laws and learn to use his knowledge in real practice. It is Bacon who owns the famous aphorism “knowledge is power.” What is most useful in action is most true in knowledge.2 “I build in human understanding the true image of the world, as it is, and not as each person’s mind suggests. And this cannot be done without carefully dissecting and anatomizing the world. And I believe that those absurd and monkey-like images of the world that are created in philosophical systems by the imagination of people should be completely dispelled.

Therefore, truth and usefulness are the same things, and activity itself is valued more as a guarantee of truth than as a creator of life’s goods.”1 Only true knowledge gives people real power and ensures their ability to change the face of the world; two human aspirations - to knowledge and power - find their optimal resultant here. This is the main idea of ​​Bacon's philosophy, which Farrington called the "philosophy of industrial science." Thanks to Bacon, the man-nature relationship is understood in a new way, which is transformed into the subject-object relationship, and enters the European mentality. Man is represented as a cognizing and active principle, that is, a subject, and nature is represented as an object to be known and used.

Bacon is dismissive of the past, biased toward the present, and believes in a bright future. He has a negative attitude towards past centuries, excluding the era of the Greek Pre-Socratics, the ancient Romans and modern times, since he considers this time not the creation of new knowledge, but even the failures of previously accumulated knowledge.

Calling on people, armed with knowledge, to subjugate nature, Francis Bacon rebelled against the scholastic learning and the spirit of self-abasement that prevailed at that time. Bacon also rejects the authority of Aristotle. “The logic that is now used serves rather to strengthen and preserve errors that have their basis in generally accepted concepts than to find the truth. Therefore, it is more harmful than useful.”2 He orients science towards the search for truth in practice, in direct observation and study of nature. “Can we not take into account the fact that long voyages and travels, which have become so frequent in our time, have discovered and shown many things in nature that can shed new light on philosophy. And of course, it would be shameful if, while the boundaries of the material world - earth, sea and stars - were so widely opened and moved apart, the mental world continued to remain within the narrow limits of what was discovered by the ancients. Bacon calls to step away from the power of authorities, not to take away the rights of Time - this author of all authors and the source of all authority. “Truth is the daughter of Time, not Authority.” The central problem Philosophy of F. Bacon can be called the problem of the relationship between man and nature, which he solves from the assessment of all phenomena from the point of view of their usefulness, the ability to serve as a means to achieve any goal.

Criticism of ordinary and scholastic reason

“In future times, I believe, the opinion will be expressed about me that I did not do anything great, but only considered insignificant what was considered great.”1

Important questions leading to the very essence of philosophy as a science are the “truth” and “imaginary”, “objectivity” and “subjectivity” of the components of human knowledge. Bacon was critical of the Idols of Reason and believed that the study of nature and the development of philosophy are hampered by misconceptions, prejudices, and cognitive “idols.”2

WITH in English idol (idolum) is translated as vision, ghost, fantasy, misconception3. There are idols of four kinds. The first idols “Idols of the race” come from the very character of the human mind, which feeds the will and feelings, coloring all things in subjective tones and thereby distorting their real nature4. For example, an individual is inclined to believe that a person’s feelings are the measure of all things; he draws analogies with himself, rather than basing his conclusions about things on “analogies of the world,” thus, a person introduces a goal into all objects of nature.5 “The human mind becomes like an uneven mirror, which, mixing its nature with the nature of things, reflects things in a distorted and disfigured form.”6 “Idols of the cave” entered the minds of people from various current opinions, speculative theories and perverse evidence. People for the most part tend to believe in the truth of what they prefer and are not inclined to try in every possible way to support and justify what they have already once accepted and are accustomed to. No matter how many significant circumstances there are that indicate otherwise, they are either ignored or interpreted in a different sense. Often the difficult is rejected because there is no patience to study it, the sober - because it depresses hope, the simple and clear - because of superstition and admiration for the incomprehensible, the data of experience - because of contempt for the particular and transitory, paradoxes - because conventional wisdom and intellectual inertia.7

Also to this innate type of Idols of the Family, or Tribe, Bacon attributes the tendency to idealization - to assume more order and uniformity in things than is actually the case, to introduce imaginary similarities and correspondences into nature, to carry out excessive distractions and mentally imagine the fluid as permanent. Examples are the Perfect Circular Orbits and Spheres of ancient astronomy, combinations of the four basic states: heat, cold, moisture, moisture, dryness, forming the quadruple root of the elements of the world: fire, earth, air and water. Bacon uses the image of Plato's philosophy to explain the Idols of the Family. “Thus, some minds are more inclined to see differences in things, others - similarities; the former capture the most subtle shades and particulars, the latter capture imperceptible analogies and create unexpected generalizations. Some, committed to tradition, prefer antiquity, while others are completely embraced by a sense of the new. Some direct their attention to the simplest elements and atoms of things, while others, on the contrary, are so overwhelmed by the contemplation of the whole that they are not able to penetrate into its component parts. These Cave Idols push both of them to extremes that have nothing to do with actual comprehension of the truth.”

Eliminating innate idols is impossible, but by realizing their significance for a person, their character, it is possible to prevent the multiplication of errors and methodically correctly organize cognition. You need to be critical of everything, especially when exploring nature, you need to make it a rule to consider everything that has captured and captivated the mind as doubtful. One must incline towards the ideal of clear and critical understanding. Bacon wrote about the “Idols of the Square” or “Idols of the Market”: “The bad and absurd establishment of words besieges the mind in a wonderful way.”2 They arise as a result of the acceptance of words by the “crowd”, with the “mutual connection” of people, when the words either have different meanings , or denote things that do not exist. When they are included in the researcher's language, they begin to interfere with the achievement of truth. These include names of fictitious, non-existent things, verbal carriers of bad and ignorant abstractions.

The pressure of these idols takes its toll when new experience opens up for words a meaning different from the one attributed to them by tradition, when old values ​​lose their meaning and the old language of symbols ceases to be generally accepted. And then what once united people is directed against their reason.3

Francis Bacon is especially critical of the “Idols of the Theatre” or “Idols of Theories”. “These are certain philosophical creations, hypotheses of scientists, many principles and axioms of the sciences. They were created, as it were, for a theatrical performance, for “comedy,” for playing in imaginary artificial worlds.”1 “In the plays of this philosophical theater we can observe the same thing as in the theaters of poets, where stories invented for the stage are more coherent and refined and more capable of satisfying the desires of everyone than true stories from history.”2 Those obsessed with this kind of idols try to enclose the diversity and richness of nature in one-sided schemes of abstract constructions and, making decisions from less than they should, do not notice how abstract cliches, dogmas and idols rape and pervert the natural and living course of their understanding.

The products of people's intellectual activity are separated from them and subsequently confront them as something alien and dominating them. For example, Francis often refers to the philosophy of Aristotle. It is sometimes said that Aristotle only points out the problem, but does not give a method for solving it, or that on a certain issue Aristotle publishes a small work in which there are some subtle observations, and considers his work exhaustive. Sometimes he accuses him of ruining natural philosophy with his logic by building the whole world out of categories.3

Of the ancient philosophers, Bacon highly values ​​the ancient Greek materialists and natural philosophers since they defined “matter as active, having a form, as endowing this form with objects formed from it, and as containing the principle of motion.”4 Also close to him is their method of analyzing nature, and not its abstractions, ignoring ideas and subordinating the mind to the nature of things. But for Bacon, doubt is not an end in itself, but a means to develop a fruitful method of knowledge. The critical view was first and foremost a way of liberation from the scholastic mind and prejudices with which the world is burdened. Methodology of natural science, experimental knowledge.

Another source of the appearance of idols is the confusion of natural science with superstition, theology with mythical legends. This is primarily, according to Bacon, due to those who build natural philosophy on the Holy Scriptures.5

Of the "exposure of evidence" Bacon says that "the logic which we now have is of no use for scientific discovery." 1Having called his main philosophical work “New Organon,” he seems to contrast it with Aristotle’s “Organon,” which accumulated the logical knowledge of antiquity, containing the principles and schemes of deductive reasoning and the construction of science. Francis Bacon thus wants to convey that Aristotle's logic is not perfect. If, in a syllogistic proof, one uses abstract concepts that do not fully reveal the essence of something, then such a logical organization can be accompanied by the appearance and persistence of errors. This is due to “the illusion of validity and evidence where there is neither one nor the other.”2

Also criticized is “the narrowness of these inference schemes, their insufficiency for expressing logical acts of creative thinking. Bacon feels that in physics, where the task is to analyze natural phenomena and not to create generic abstractions... and not to “entangle the enemy with arguments, syllogistic deduction is unable to grasp the “subtleties of the perfection of nature”3, with the result that it eludes us true. But he does not consider the syllogism absolutely useless, he says that the syllogism is unacceptable in some cases, rather than useless at all.4 Find examples of deduction and induction.

Therefore, Bacon concludes that Aristotle's logic is "more harmful than beneficial"

Attitude to religion

“Man is called upon to discover the laws of nature that God has hidden from him. Guided by knowledge, he becomes like the Almighty, who also first shed light and only then created the material world... Both Nature and Scripture are the work of God, and therefore they do not contradict, but agree with each other. It is only unacceptable to resort to the same method to explain divine Scripture as to explain human writings, but the reverse is also unacceptable.” Bacon was one of the few who gave his preference to the natural. “... Separating the natural sciences from the theological, asserting its independent and independent status, he did not break with religion, in which he saw the main binding force of society.”1 (op. 27)

Francis Bacon believed that man's deep and sincere relationship with nature brings him back to religion.

The empirical method and the theory of induction

A brief description of the 17th century in ideas about science can be considered using the example of physics, based on the reasoning of Roger Cotes, who was a contemporary of Bacon.

Roger Cotes is an English mathematician and philosopher, famous editor and publisher of Isaac Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.”1

In his publishing preface to Principia, Cotes talks about three approaches to physics, which differ from each other precisely in philosophical and methodological terms:

) The scholastic followers of Aristotle and the Peripatetics attributed special hidden qualities to various kinds of objects and argued that the interactions of individual bodies occur due to the peculiarities of their nature. What these features consist of, and how the actions of bodies are carried out, they did not teach.

As Cotes concludes: “Therefore, in essence, they taught nothing. Thus, everything came down to the names of individual objects, and not to the very essence of the matter, and one can say that they created the philosophical language, and not philosophy itself.”2

) Supporters of Cartesian physics believed that the substance of the Universe is homogeneous and all the differences observed in bodies come from some of the simplest and understandable properties of the particles that make up these bodies. Their reasoning would be completely correct if they attributed to these primary particles only those properties that nature actually endowed them with. Also, at the level of hypotheses, they arbitrarily invented various types and sizes of particles, their locations, connections, and movements.

Regarding them, Richard Cotes notes: “Those who borrow the foundations of their reasoning from hypotheses, even if everything further were developed by them in the most precise manner on the basis of the laws of mechanics, would create a very elegant and beautiful fable, but still only a fable.”

) Adherents of experimental philosophy or the experimental method of studying natural phenomena also strive to derive the causes of all things from the simplest possible principles, but they do not accept anything as a beginning, except what is confirmed by occurring phenomena. Two methods are used - analytical and synthetic. They derive the forces of nature and the simplest laws of their action analytically from some selected phenomena and then synthetically obtain the laws of other phenomena.

Referring to Isaac Newton, Cotes writes: “It is this very best method of studying nature that is adopted preferentially by our most famous author.”1

The first bricks in the foundation of this methodology were laid by Francis Bacon, about whom they said: “the real founder of English materialism and all modern experimental science...”2 His merit is that he clearly emphasized: scientific knowledge stems from experience, not just from direct sensory data, namely from purposefully organized experience, experiment. Science cannot be built simply on direct sensory data. There are many things that elude the senses; the evidence of the senses is subjective, “always related to a person, and not to the world.”3 And if the senses can refuse us their help or deceive us, then it cannot be argued that “feeling is the measure of things” . Bacon offers compensation for the inadequacy of feelings and the correction of his errors is provided by a correctly organized and specially adapted experiment or experiment. “... since the nature of things reveals itself better in a state of artificial constraint than in natural freedom.”4

In this case, science is interested in experiments that are carried out with the aim of discovering new properties, phenomena, their causes, axioms, which provide material for a subsequent more complete and deep theoretical understanding. Francis distinguishes two types of experiences - “luminous” and “fruitful”. This is the distinction between an experiment aimed solely at obtaining a new scientific result from an experiment pursuing one or another direct practical benefit. Argues that the discovery and establishment of correct theoretical concepts gives us not superficial knowledge, but deep knowledge, entails numerous series of the most unexpected applications and warns against a premature pursuit of immediate new practical results.5

When forming theoretical axioms and concepts and natural phenomena, one must rely on the facts of experience; one cannot rely on abstract justifications. The most important thing is to develop the correct method for analyzing and summarizing experimental data, which will make it possible to step by step penetrate into the essence of the phenomena being studied. Induction must be such a method, but not one that draws conclusions from a mere enumeration of a limited number of favorable facts. Bacon sets himself the task of formulating the principle of scientific induction, “which would produce division and selection in experience and, by due exceptions and discards, would draw the necessary conclusions.”1

Since in the case of induction there is an incomplete experience, Francis Bacon understands the need to develop effective means, which would allow for a more complete analysis of the information contained in the premises of inductive inference.

Bacon rejected the probabilistic approach to induction. “The essence of his inductive method, his tables of Discovery - Presence, Absence and Degrees. A sufficient number of different cases of some “simple property” (for example, density, warmth, heaviness, color, etc.) is collected, the nature or “form” of which is sought. Then a set of cases is taken, as similar as possible to the previous ones, but already those in which this property is absent. Then there are many cases in which a change in the intensity of the property of interest to us is observed. Comparison of all these sets makes it possible to exclude factors that do not accompany the property being constantly studied, i.e. not present where a given property is present, or present where it is absent, or not enhanced when it is strengthened. By such discarding, we ultimately obtain a certain remainder that invariably accompanies the property we are interested in—its “form.”2

The main techniques of this method are analogy and exclusion, since empirical data for the Discovery tables are selected by analogy. It lies at the foundation of inductive generalization, which is achieved through selection, culling a number of circumstances from a set of initial possibilities. This process of analysis can be facilitated by rare situations in which the nature under study, for one reason or another, is more obvious than in others. Bacon counts and sets forth twenty-seven such preferential examples of prerogative instances. These include those cases: when the property under study exists in objects that are completely different from each other in all other respects; or, conversely, this property is absent in objects that are completely similar to each other;

This property is observed to the most obvious, maximum extent; the obvious alternativeness of two or more causal explanations is revealed.

Features of the interpretation of Francis Bacon's induction that connect the logical part of Bacon's teaching with his analytical methodology and philosophical metaphysics are as follows: First, the means of induction are intended to identify the forms of “simple properties” or “natures” into which all concrete physical bodies are decomposed. What is subject to inductive research, for example, is not gold, water or air, but such properties or qualities as density, heaviness, malleability, color, warmth, volatility. Such an analytical approach to the theory of knowledge and methodology of science would subsequently turn into a strong tradition of English philosophical empiricism.

Secondly, the task of Bacon's induction is to identify the “form” - in peripatetic terminology, the “formal” cause, and not the “efficient” or “material”, which are private and transitory and therefore cannot be invariably and significantly associated with certain simple properties .1

“Metaphysics” is called upon to explore forms “embracing the unity of nature in dissimilar matters”2, and physics deals with more particular material and efficient causes that are transitory, external carriers of these forms. “If we are talking about the reason for the whiteness of snow or foam, then the correct definition would be that it is a thin mixture of air and water. But this is still far from being a form of whiteness, since air mixed with powdered glass or powdered crystal produces whiteness in the same way, no worse than when combined with water. This is only the efficient cause, which is nothing more than the bearer of form. But if metaphysics investigates the same question, the answer will be approximately as follows: two transparent bodies, evenly mixed with each other in the smallest parts in a simple order, create the color white.”3 Francis Bacon's metaphysics does not coincide with the “mother of all sciences” - first philosophy, but is part of the science of nature itself, a higher, more abstract and deeper branch of physics. As Bacon writes in a letter to Baranzan: “Do not worry about metaphysics, there will be no metaphysics after the discovery of true physics, beyond which there is nothing but the divine.”4

We can conclude that for Bacon induction is a method of developing fundamental theoretical concepts and axioms of natural science or natural philosophy.

Bacon’s reasoning about “form” in the “New Organon”: “A thing differs from form no differently than appearance differs from essence, or external from internal, or a thing in relation to a person from a thing in relation to the world.”1 The concept of “form” goes back to Aristotle, in whose teaching it, along with matter, efficient cause and purpose, is one of the four principles of being.

In the texts of Bacon’s works there are many different names for “form”: essentia, resipsissima, natura naturans, fons emanationis, definitio vera, differentia vera, lex actus puri.2 “All of them characterize from different sides this concept, either as the essence of a thing, or as the internal , the immanent cause or nature of its properties, as their internal source, then as the true definition or distinction of a thing, and finally, as the law of the pure action of matter. All of them are quite consistent with each other, if only one does not ignore their connection with scholastic usage and their origin from the doctrine of the Peripatetics. And at the same time, Bacon’s understanding of form differs significantly in at least two points from that dominant in idealistic scholasticism: firstly, by recognizing the materiality of the forms themselves, and secondly, by the conviction of their complete knowability.3 Form, according to Bacon, is the material thing itself , but taken in its truly objective essence, and not as it appears or appears to the subject. In this regard, he wrote that matter, rather than forms, should be the subject of our attention - its states and action, changes in states and the law of action or motion, “for forms are inventions of the human mind, unless these laws of action are called forms.” . And such an understanding allowed Bacon to pose the task of studying forms empirically, by an inductive method.”4

Francis Bacon distinguishes two kinds of form - the forms of concrete things, or substances, which are something complex, consisting of many forms of simple natures, since any concrete thing is a combination of simple natures; and forms of simple properties, or natures. Simple property forms are first class forms. They are eternal and motionless, but they are precisely the ones of different quality, individualizing the nature of things and their inherent essences. Karl Marx wrote: “In Bacon, as its first creator, materialism still conceals within itself, in a naive form, the germs of comprehensive development. Matter smiles with its poetic and sensual brilliance on the whole person.”5

There are a finite number of simple forms, and by their number and combination they determine the entire variety of existing things. For example, gold. It has a yellow color, such and such weight, malleability and strength, has a certain fluidity in the liquid state, dissolves and is released in such and such reactions. Let's explore the forms of these and other simple properties of gold. Having learned the methods of obtaining yellowness, heaviness, malleability, strength, fluidity, solubility, etc. in a degree and measure specific to this metal, you can organize their combination in any body and thus obtain gold. Bacon has a clear consciousness that any practice can be successful if it is guided by the correct theory, and an associated orientation towards a rational and methodologically verified understanding of natural phenomena. “Even at the dawn of modern natural science, Bacon seems to have foreseen that his task would be not only the knowledge of nature, but also the search for new possibilities not realized by nature itself.”1

In the postulate about limited quantities forms, one can see the outline of a very important principle of inductive research, in one form or another assumed in subsequent theories of induction. Essentially joining Bacon at this point, I. Newton formulates his “Rules of Inference in Physics”:

“Rule I. One must not accept other causes in nature beyond those that are true and sufficient to explain phenomena.

On this occasion, philosophers argue that nature does nothing in vain, but it would be in vain for many to do what can be done by fewer. Nature is simple and does not luxury with superfluous causes of things.

Rule II. Therefore, in so far as it is possible, one must attribute the same causes of the same kind to the manifestations of nature.

So, for example, the breathing of people and animals, the falling of stones in Europe and Africa, the light of the kitchen hearth and the Sun, the reflection of light on the Earth and on the planets.”2

Francis Bacon's theory of induction is closely connected with his philosophical ontology, methodology, with the doctrine of simple natures, or properties, and their forms, with the concept different types causal dependence. Logic, understood as an interpreted system, that is, as a system with a given semantics, always has some ontological premises and is essentially built as a logical model of some ontological structure.

Bacon himself does not yet draw such a definite and general conclusion. But he notes that logic must proceed “not only from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.” He writes about the need to “modify the method of discovery in relation to the quality and state of the subject that we are investigating.”1 Both Bacon’s Approach and all subsequent development of logic indicate that for significantly different tasks, different logical models are required, that this is true both for deductive , and for inductive logics. Therefore, subject to a sufficiently specific and delicate analysis, there will be not one, but many systems of inductive logics, each of which acts as a specific logical model of a certain kind of ontological structure.2

Induction, as a method of productive discovery, must work according to strictly defined rules, which should not depend in their application on the differences in the individual abilities of researchers, “almost equalizing talents and leaving little to their superiority.”3

For example, “a compass and a ruler, when drawing circles and straight lines, neutralize the sharpness of the eye and the firmness of the hand. Elsewhere, regulating cognition with a “ladder” of strictly consistent inductive generalizations, Bacon even resorts to the following image: “Reason should not be given wings, but rather lead and heaviness, so that they restrain every jump and flight”4. “This is a very precise metaphorical expression of one of the basic methodological principles of scientific knowledge. A certain regulation always distinguishes scientific knowledge from everyday knowledge, which is usually not clear and precise enough and is not subject to methodologically verified self-control. Such regulation is manifested, for example, in the fact that any experimental result in science is accepted as a fact if it is repeatable, if in the hands of all researchers it is the same, which in turn implies standardization of the conditions for its implementation; it also manifests itself in the fact that the explanation must satisfy the conditions of fundamental verifiability and have predictive power, and all reasoning is based on the laws and norms of logic. The very idea of ​​considering induction as a systematic research procedure and an attempt to formulate its exact rules, of course, cannot be underestimated.”

The scheme proposed by Bacon does not guarantee the reliability and certainty of the result obtained, since it does not provide confidence that the elimination process has been completed. “A real corrective to his methodology would be a more attentive attitude to the hypothetical element in the implementation of inductive generalization, which always takes place here at least in fixing the initial possibilities for culling.” The method, which consists in putting forward certain postulates or hypotheses, from which consequences are then deduced and tested experimentally, was followed not only by Archimedes, but also by Stevin, Galileo and Descartes - contemporaries of Bacon, who laid the foundations of a new natural science. Experience that is not preceded by some theoretical idea and consequences from it simply does not exist in natural science. In this regard, Bacon's view of the purpose and role of mathematics is such that as physics increases its achievements and discovers new laws, it will increasingly need mathematics. But he viewed mathematics primarily as a method of finalizing natural philosophy, and not as one of the sources of its concepts and principles, not as a creative principle and apparatus in the discovery of the laws of nature. He was even inclined to evaluate the method of mathematical modeling of natural processes as the Idol of the Human Race. Meanwhile, mathematical schemes are essentially abbreviated records of a generalized physical experiment that model the processes under study with an accuracy that allows one to predict the results of future experiments. The relationship between experiment and mathematics for different branches of science is different and depends on the development of both experimental capabilities and the available mathematical technology.

Bringing philosophical ontology into line with this method of the new natural science fell to the lot of Bacon's student and the “systematicist” of his materialism, Thomas Hobbes. “And if Bacon in natural science already neglects final, target causes, which, according to him, like a virgin who dedicated herself to God, are barren and cannot give birth to anything, then Hobbes also refuses Bacon’s “forms”, attaching importance only to material active causes. 1

The program of research and construction of a picture of nature according to the “form - essence” scheme gives way to a research program, but to the “causality” scheme. The general nature of the worldview changes accordingly. “In its further development, materialism becomes one-sided...” wrote K. Marx. - Sensuality loses its bright colors and turns into the abstract sensuality of a geometer. Physical movement is sacrificed to mechanical or mathematical movement; geometry is proclaimed the main science.”1 This is how the main scientific work of the century was ideologically prepared - “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” by Isaac Newton, which brilliantly embodied these two seemingly polar approaches - strict experiment and mathematical deduction.”

“I do not claim, however, that nothing can be added to this,” wrote Bacon. “On the contrary, considering the mind not only in its own abilities, but also in its connection with things, it should be recognized that the art of discovery can make progress along with the success of the discoveries themselves.”3

The anti-clerical Reformation in England led to significant changes in religious consciousness. The country entered its late Renaissance virtually without a dominant religion. By the end of the 16th century, neither the officially enforced Anglicanism, nor the Catholicism undermined by the Reformation, nor the numerous persecuted sects of Protestants and Puritans could claim this. The crown’s attempts to join the country to a “single religion” remained unsuccessful, and the very fact that the affairs of the church and religion were decided by secular authorities contributed to the fact that secularization also captured other spheres of the spiritual life of society. Human reason, common sense and interest crowded out the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the dogma of the church. Francis Bacon was also one of those who laid the foundation in England for the concept of “natural” morality, the construction of ethics, although involved in theology, but mainly without the help of religious ideas, based on rationally understood this-worldly life aspirations and affects of the human personality.

Francis Bacon's task was, by turning to examples of real, everyday life, to try to understand the ways, means and incentives of that human expression of will, which is subject to one or another moral assessment.

Determining the sources of morality, Bacon decisively asserted the primacy and greatness of the common good over the individual, active life over contemplative life, public prestige over personal satisfaction.

After all, no matter how dispassionate contemplation, spiritual serenity, self-satisfaction or the desire for individual pleasure adorn a person’s personal life, they do not stand up to criticism if we approach this life from the point of view of the criteria of its social purpose. And then it turns out that all these “soul-harmonizing” benefits are nothing more than means of cowardly escape from life with its anxieties, temptations and antagonisms and that they cannot in any way serve as the basis for that genuine mental health, activity and courage that allows you to withstand blows fate, overcome life's difficulties and, fulfilling one's duty, act fully and socially in this world.1 He sought to build ethics as focused on human nature, and on the norms of moral axioms, which “within its own boundaries could contain a lot of reasonable and useful things.”

But in this understanding, the common good was created by will, mind and calculation individuals, public well-being consisted of everyone’s collective desire for well-being; public recognition was received by outstanding individuals in one respect or another. Therefore, along with the thesis “the common good is above all,” Bacon defends and develops another: “man himself is the architect of his own happiness.” We just need to be able to intelligently determine the meaning and value of all things depending on how much they contribute to the achievement of our goals - mental health and strength, wealth, social status and prestige. And whatever Bacon wrote about the art of conversation, manners and propriety, about the ability to conduct business, about wealth and expenses, about achieving high office, about love, friendship and cunning, about ambition, honor and fame, he constantly had in mind and based his assessments, judgments and recommendations on this aspect of the matter from the criteria corresponding to it.

Bacon's focus is narrowed and focused on human behavior and its evaluation in terms of achieving certain results. In his reflections there is no self-absorption, gentleness, skepticism, humor, bright and independent perception of the world, but only objectivism and concentrated analysis of what should provide a person with his position and success. “Here, for example, is his essay “On a High Position.” In theme, it coincides with Montaigne’s essay “On the Shyness of High Position.” The essence of Montaigne's reasoning is this: I prefer to take third rather than first place in Paris; if I strive for growth, it is not in height - I want to grow in what is available to me, achieving greater determination, prudence, attractiveness and even wealth. Universal honor and the power of government suppress and frighten him. He is ready to give up rather than jump over the step determined by his abilities, for every natural state is both the most just and convenient. Bacon believes that you do not necessarily fall from every height; much more often you can descend safely. Bacon's attention is entirely directed to figuring out how to achieve a high position and how to behave in order to maintain it. His reasoning is practical. He argues that power deprives a person of freedom, makes him a slave of both the sovereign, and people’s rumors, and his business. But this is far from the most important thing, because those who have achieved power consider it natural to hold on to it and are happy when they stop the harassment of others.1 “No, people are not able to retire when they would like; They don’t leave even when they should; Solitude is unbearable for everyone, even old age and infirmities, which should be hidden in the shade; Thus, old people always sit on the threshold, although by doing so they expose their gray hairs to ridicule.”

In the essay “On the Art of Commanding,” he advises how to limit the influence of arrogant prelates, to what extent to suppress the old feudal nobility, how to create a counterweight to it in the new nobility, which is sometimes headstrong, but still a reliable support for the throne and a bulwark against the common people, what tax policy to support the merchants. While the English king virtually ignored parliament, Bacon, bearing in mind the dangers of despotism, recommended its regular convening, seeing in parliament both an assistant to royal power and a mediator between the monarch and the people. He was occupied not only with issues of political tactics and government structure, but also with a wide range of socio-economic activities in which England, which was already firmly embarking on the path of bourgeois development, lived at that time. Bacon associated the prosperity of his country and the well-being of its people with the encouragement of manufactures and trading companies, with the founding of colonies and the investment of capital in Agriculture, with a reduction in the number of unproductive classes of the population, with the eradication of idleness and curbing luxury and wastefulness.

As a statesman and political writer, he gave his sympathies to the interests and aspirations of those prosperous strata who were simultaneously oriented towards the benefits of commercial and industrial development and the absolutism of royal power, which could protect against dangerous competitors, organize the seizure of colonial markets, and issue a patent. for a profitable monopoly, and provide any other support from above.1

In the essay “On Troubles and Rebellions,” Bacon writes: “Let no ruler think of judging the danger of discontent by how just it is; for this would mean attributing excessive prudence to the people, while they are often opposed to their own good...” “Skillfully and deftly to entertain people with hopes, to lead people from one hope to another is one of the best antidotes against discontent. A truly wise government is one that knows how to lull people into hope when it cannot satisfy their needs.”2

Francis Bacon believed that there are no true and reliable moral criteria and everything is measured only by the degree of usefulness, benefit and luck. His ethics were relative, but they were not utilitarian. Bacon sought to distinguish acceptable methods from unacceptable ones, which, in particular, included those recommended by Machiavelli, who freed political practice from any court of religion and morality. Whatever goals people achieve, they act in a complex, multifaceted world, in which there are all the colors of the palette, there is love, and goodness, and beauty, and justice, and of which no one has the right to deprive of this wealth.

For “being itself without moral being is a curse, and the more significant this existence, the more significant this curse.”1 In all the feverish human pursuit of happiness, there is also a higher restraining principle, which Bacon saw in piety. Religion, as a firm principle of a single faith, was for him, as it were, the highest moral binding force of society.

In Bacon's Essays, in addition to the relative moral consciousness that burdens them, there is also a human component that changes incomparably more slowly than the specific social and political conditions of existence.

reason induction nature scholastic

Conclusion

Getting acquainted with the works and life of Francis Bacon, you understand that he was a great figure, deeply involved in the political affairs of his time, a politician to the core, who deeply shows the state. Bacon's works are among those historical treasures, the acquaintance and study of which still brings great benefits to modern society.

Bacon's work had a strong influence on the general spiritual atmosphere in which the science and philosophy of the 17th century were formed.

Bibliography

1) Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. Philosophy: Textbook - 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M.: TK Welby, Prospekt Publishing House, 2003 - 608 p.

) K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch., vol. 2, 1971- 450 p.

) N. Gordensky. Francis Bacon, his doctrine of method and encyclopedia of sciences. Sergiev Posad, 1915 - 789 p.

4) New large English-Russian dictionary, 2001.<#"justify">6) F. Bacon. Essays. T. 1. Comp., general ed. and will join. article by A.L. Subbotina. M., "Thought", 1971-591 p.

) F. Bacon. Essays. T. 2. M., "Thought", 1971-495 p.