This paper resolves some puzzles regarding Spinoza’s appropriations and rejections of various aspects of Bacon’s methodology, and uses these solutions to resolve some long-standing puzzles concerning Spinoza’s modus operandi in the TTP. We argue first that, appearances to contrary, Spinoza takes a consistent line in his assessment of Bacon’s epistemic approach. We argue that Spinoza follows Bacon in grounding his overall epistemic method in a “historiola mentis” (a brief account or history of the mind), and that differences between Spinoza’s and (...) Bacon’s respective historiola mentis can explain Spinoza’s embrace of this inductive method for his interpretation of Scripture in the TTP, as well as his general abandonment of Bacon’s inductive method in the metaphysical investigation of the Ethics. In short, we argue that the “historiola mentis” constructed by Bacon depicts the intellect as an error-prone faculty that needs be continuously restrained by observation and experimentation—a depiction which motivates Bacon’s reformed inductive empiricism. Spinoza accepts this depiction in regard to a subset of the mind’s ideas—the ideas of the imagination, and hence sees the inductive method as suitable for interpreting Scripture. But contra Bacon, Spinoza’s “historiola mentis” also shows that the human mind includes a subset of ideas that yield true, certain knowledge of things “infinite” and sub specie aeternitatis. Spinoza finds these “intellectual” ideas to be quite useful for systematic metaphysics, but of limited use for interpreting historical texts like Scripture. (shrink)

This chapter investigates a specific case of Baconian experimentation, that is, a series of controlled experimental trials Bacon undertook in order to study the processes of maturation and putrefaction. The results of these trials were repeatedly used by Francis Bacon in his writings to illustrate the motions of spirits enclosed in matter. In this chapter, I reconstruct some of Bacon’s experiments with apples placed under different circumstances and conditions, as recorded in Historia vitae et mortis, De vijs mortis, Novum organum (...) and Sylva Sylvarum. I argue that they help reassess several problematic aspects concerning Bacon’s attitude towards the experimental knowledge of nature. Firstly, they offer a paradigmatic situation in which one can explore Bacon’s creative and critical handling of sources. Secondly, they show Bacon at work as an experimenter who carefully and accurately observed, recorded and imagined interesting experimental set-ups and variations of experimental parameters, while displaying an interest in experimental methodology and the limits of experimental procedure. Finally, Bacon’s apples are a good way of exemplifying the multiple uses and functions experiments play in his natural and experimental histories. (shrink)