Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Bensalem's isolation is thus the Baconian antecedent to that preference
for the “uncomfortable truth” of natural fact that E. O. Wilson now lauds
as science's defining virtue. I am not saying that the empiricist ethic invoked
in such catchphrases has no importance in upholding science's distinctive
rigors; I am only saying that it does something more that only becomes
evident once we take note of how empiricism coincides with the progressive
meanings that evolutionism promotes. Having inherited from Bacon the
supposition that science manifests a historical destiny closed off to most
people, the scientific culture needs to uphold some similar historical ratio-
nale that demonstrates what exempts it from the common errors of human-
ity. Empiricism, as a key expression of that exempting separation, is thus as
much a historical ideal as it is an epistemic one.
R
evelation
anD
m
illennium
This third pairing has to do with the thematic association between new
revelations and new beginnings that was so vital to the emerging historical
consciousness of Protestants. I draw attention to it here for two reasons.
The first and most immediate reason is that it illustrates how Bacon recon-
ciled his prognostications with the difficult historical fact that science had
never been particularly prominent in Christianity. As I noted earlier in this
chapter, by linking science to a prophesied millennium, Bacon worked with
an orthodox historical conception, but one that also lent itself to novelty.
The second reason is that millenarian reasoning of this kind clearly antici-
pates the future-centered consciousness of modernism and in this regard is
the likely antecedent from which evolutionism's modernist themes descend.
When Bacon identified the rise of science with the millennium, he was also
linking it to a notion of history which supposed that the revelations of the
present and future supersede those of the past. In this regard, science was
taking an important first step in linking itself to that pattern of epochal
thinking that now makes the scientific revelations of the present the stan-
dard for all historical interpretation. New historical epochs in the Bible are
always initiated and defined by sacred disclosures, since it is prophecy that
reveals the providential order of history. As I noted earlier, the rising inter-
est in millenarian prophesies within the Protestant movement signals its
efforts to rationalize sweeping reforms by mainstreaming them. This like-
wise gave Bacon an opportunity to create a central role for science by put-
ting it on the same bandwagon. The millenarian turn had created a pretext
