“The Violence of Impediments” - UC Berkeley College of ...

CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS The Violence of impediments francis bacon and the Origins ofExperimentationBy Carolyn Merchant*ABSTRACTF rancis bacon s use of metaphors to characterize his nascent concept of experimentationmust be interpreted within the historical context of his time. His approach to experimen-tation is one in which nature is constrained by the Violence of impediments and is madenew by art and the hand of man. His language about nature should be placed in thecontext of the history of the contained, controlled experiment, a concept that emerges fromjuridical practice, from the idea of nature in bonds, and from the tradition of the secretsof nature in settings such as the courtroom, the anatomy theater, and the bacon (1561 1626) played a formative role in the emergence of thecontained, controlled experiment. From his early writings in the 1590s to his matureconcept of the experiment in the 1620s, he struggled by means of vivid metaphor to definea new method of gaining truth about the natural efforts of classical and* Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley ,California am grateful for discussions with and comments from Roger Hahn, Donna Haraway, David Kubrin, HaydenWhite, David Winickoff, and have used and compared a number of editions and translations of francis bacon s texts in this otherwise noted.

“The Violence of Impediments” Francis Bacon and the Origins of Experimentation By Carolyn Merchant* ABSTRACT Francis Bacon’s use of metaphors to characterize his nascent concept of experimentation must be interpreted within the historical context of his time. His approach to experimen-

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  Violence, Bacon, Francis, Francis bacon, Impediments, The violence of impediments

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