The following chapter seeks to outline a prominent feature of Bacon’s view of the natural world – namely, its profoundly moral character – and to suggest that his model of natural philosophy is based not only upon principles drawn from earlier natural philosophers, but also from the spheres of moral and political philosophy. Rather than looking forward to the mechanical and mathematical explanations of Descartes, Newton and the seventeenth century, this chapter will attempt to show how Bacon’s understanding of the (...) universe was indebted, at least in part, to the historical, political and moral ideas he found in the works of Tacitus, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Lipsius. It will then elaborate upon the manner in which Bacon thought the moral and political character of material nature manifested itself in humans, as well as how he thought it should ideally serve as the foundation of law and society. (shrink)

Early modern natural philosophers such as Francis Bacon are frequently seen as providing a legitimating ideology for British imperial expansion. Although this has been challenged by one recent study, much of Bacon's work on English colonisation remains unexplored. This article argues that far from being an ideological apologist for English colonisation, Bacon had two sets of colonial anxieties. The first derived from a tradition of civic humanism which concerned the moral corruption, dispossession of indigenous people and the greed involved in (...) the British colonization of Ireland and America. Bacon's second anxiety was not moral but epistemological, and stemmed from his natural philosophy. For Bacon, colonies were not simply new commonwealths, they were places which potentially produced the natural knowledge vital for the recreation of man's original, epistemic empire over the world. Consequently, Bacon was not only interested in the morality of colonising, but also whether the knowledge produced in colonies was reliable. An exploration of Bacon's views on colonisation also offers us a point of entry into the scholarly debate about the relationship between Bacon's natural philosophy and his political thought. (shrink)