Biology Reference
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reveals a continuity of thematic substance that persists as cultures evolve.
When we follow the transition from Bacon's scientific narrative in which the
church scientific played the role of hero to one in which this part was played
by science alone, we will begin to recognize that the idea of providence
was not lost but only reinvented under the rubric of progress. Because the
theory of displacement also shows that form and meaning are interchange-
able, the finding that Enlightenment narratives of progress have borrowed
narrative forms from recognizably religious antecedents indicates that they
are not entirely secular.
The text I will use to examine this transformation is the Marquis de
C ondorc et 's (1743 -1794)
Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit
humain
(
Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
) (1795).
Superficially, this brief history of reason's evolution might seem to have
nothing in common with the providential narrative given by Bacon since
its attitude toward religion is so patently hostile. Like his teacher, Voltaire,
Condorcet rejected Europe's religious traditions as mere superstition and
as the cardinal obstacle to civilized advancement. But despite this, the
Esquisse
reveals an undercurrent of historical thinking that is homologous
with what one finds in Bacon. Just as Bacon's
New Atlantis
was an effort to
imagine how the history of learning might have unfolded if the church had
remained faithful to revelation, Condorcet laid a similarly preestablished
narrative over European history. Bacon's story is constructed as a theology
of history, an effort to account for the past shortcomings of learning by
appealing to the Protestant doctrine of
sola scriptura
. In Bensalem, Bacon
imagines a civilization that was unwavering in its faithfulness to the topic of
God's word and consequently was also steadfast in its devotion to the topic
of God's works. This was explicitly a fictional history, but it was one that
unfolded in accordance with theological reality. Condorcet's
Esquisse
is not
feigned history in the same overt sense since its ten chapters (nine summing
up past progress and one projecting its future course) deal with a familiar
historical record, but like Bacon's work it does fictionalize the past by con-
forming it to a similar theory of historical development. Condorcet's sketch
imposes a philosophical model upon the past that is designed to bring to
light an imagined pattern of continuous progress that would otherwise be
invisible. Bacon had been able to make history accord with the purity of
providence by a free play of imagination; Condorcet brings his story into
accordance with a derivative notion of progress by shaping the historical
record into a romantic narrative that both appropriates and obscures this
theological model of history.
