Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
them) that the fallen self mistakes for reality. Science may also draw much
public favor from the instrumental potential that Bacon promoted, but as
I have pointed out already, this could have only limited effectiveness as a
public rationale. A scientific enterprise justified by its applications stands
or falls with promises that are for the most part unlikely to be fulfilled,
but one that stands on some moral or transcendent principle will remain
compulsory regardless of its practical merits. The value that continues to
reside in the perception of science's special and unwavering devotion to the
text of nature explains why we can always expect odd declarations like Carl
Sagan's assertion that “evolution is a fact, not a theory.” Science's empiricist
side tends to be magnified and its rationalistic side diminished because the
creative human contributions to knowledge denoted by the word “theory”
draw attention away from the distinctive natural bases of its priestly ethos.
I turn now to the historical consciousness that also infused the scien-
tific ethos of the seventeenth century. By bringing a specifically Protestant
meaning to scientific empiricism, Bacon also gave science a place in the new
understanding of providential history that was arising within the Reforma-
tion. My purpose in illustrating how the historical aspect of the Protestant
consciousness was dramatized in Bacon's
New Atlantis
is to show how his
message anticipates a pattern of historical thinking that continues to be
integral to evolutionism, namely the doctrine of progress.
Of course Bacon's
New Atlantis
is not a work of history per se; it is only
a work of fiction that happens to incorporate familiar historical themes of
Christianity. It does so by imagining an ancient Christian civilization that
was able to remain true to the revelation of the Bible because it arose in iso-
lation from Catholic Europe on a distant Pacific island. Having remained
true to the Christ's original message, it has also developed a robust sci-
entific culture. In this regard it is an example of what Bacon had earlier
called “feigned history,” an exercise of literary imagination that is better
able than actual historical exposition to reveal those patterns of divine
action that are the genuine bases of historical meaning. Understood in this
way,
New Atlantis
spoke historical truth, not because Christianity had ever
produced a great scientific civilization, but because the truth of providence,
once made clear by the imagination's power to see past the corruptions of
fallen human nature that clouded actual history, showed that science was
Christendom's ordained destiny. Bacon's imaginary history possessed this
prophetic authority because it modeled historical premises that the Refor-
mation had brought to the fore. The reformers needed such a revised under-
standing of Christian history because they were breaking with a tradition
