2014 | Volume 2 ISSN 2305-6991

Issue 2 | 1825 BCSSS

The Baconian Project of Science

and the Crisis of Salomons
House

Hans Schelkshorn
Institute for Christian Philsophy, Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Vienna ,
Schenkenstrae 8 -10, 1010 -Wien, johann.schelkshorn@univie.ac.at , Tel. 0043 -1-
4277 -30 703.

Abstract: This essay deals with the current crisis in science whose roots can be analyzed in the light of
Francis Bacons utopic work New Atlantis. According to Bacon science is no longer the task of
individual thinkers but of a societal institution, Salomons House, which determines the whole society
by its dynamic of limitless technological innovations. In the 19th century modern science became the
most important factor of productivity within the capitalist system, as already Marx criticized. In the
neoliberal era the Marxian diagnosis, however, became applicable to all Western states. Thus the
scientific institutions have been transformed by the logic of competitiveness and entrepreneurship.
Therefore Salomons House is threatened both by distorted institutional frameworks and the extremely
dangerous utopia of limitless technological power nowadays. This deep crisis in science can only be
solved by a combination of system analysis and normative reflections.

Keywords: Baconian science; science and systems; science and economics; science and ethics

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the author(s), publisher and licensee
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Systema: connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology

Systema: connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology | 2014 | volume 2 | issue 2

About 80 years ago Edmund Husserl held his famous lectures on The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology in Vienna. The focus of Husserls work was
the diagnosis of the self-destructive tendencies of science, which he saw as losing any
significance for the life-world (Lebenswelt) of humans through its inherent process of
conceptual objectification (Husserl, 1976; Ebbighausen, 2010). Although Husserls intention
to rebuild science by embedding it within a phenomenological theory of transcendental
rationality is met with deep skepticism in current philosophical debates, his diagnosis of the
self-destructive tendencies still offers an astute and perceptive view on the crisis of science
and research we are facing today. At the same time though, the main roots of the current
crisis seem not to lie as much in the conceptual objectification but rather in how science is
institutionally organized. At this point I would like to illustrate the problem by relating a
political grotesque. In 2014 the new Austrian government integrated the former Ministry of
Science and Research into the agenda of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This so-called
administrative measure provoked widespread public debate and even protests against the
increasing influence of economic interests on the scientific system. Even non-academics
articulated their deep concern about the integrity of science, which they saw as threatened
by this move. Unfortunately, the new Austrian Ministry of Science, Research and Economy
is not only a local grotesque. The British agency responsible for universities and science is
integrated into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; similar institutional
arrangements also exist in the European Union.
According to Husserl, the crisis of science can only be analyzed within a historical
framework that takes the origins of scientific thought in Greek philosophy as its starting
point. Adopting this perspective, I would like to present a short historical sketch of the
current crisis in both science and the humanities, a crisis directly affecting us all in our
everyday practice as researchers and academics.

1 Outlines of the Baconian Project of a New

Science
The complaint about the commodification of science is a general one and has at times been
th
a stereotypical response expounded by cultural criticism since the 19 century. In a
historical perspective however, the relations between science and economics are a quite
complex problem.
Indeed, the idea of a mere theoretical approach to the world was founded by Greek
philosophy, as Edmund Husserl already had pointed out. However, even Greek philosophy
was not in any sense free of interests. On the contrary, according to Plato and Aristoteles
the rational investigation and vision (theoria) of the cosmic order was an integral part of
human self-perfection. The idea of a rational conduct of human life suffered from two
limitations however: firstly, it was open to only a few human beings; and secondly, it was
based on a slave economy. Therefore, even Greek philosophy supposed a certain
relationship to the prevailing economy or economic order.
The ancient idea of philosophy was radically transformed by the founders of modern
science. Some of the main elements of the epochal transformation of natural philosophy
1
were already developed by Francis Bacon.

1
For a more detailed interpretation of Bacon see Schelkshorn, 2009, p. 411-470.

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Introducing the experiment as a cornerstone of the new science, Bacon determined

not only a new method but identified a new task of science. The aim of natural science was
to no longer consist in contemplating the cosmos, but rather to instigate an active
transformation of the natural world in order to stretch the deplorable narrow limits of mans
dominion over the universe to their promised bounds (Bacon, 1964, p. 62). As the formula
promised bounds indicates, the Baconian project of science aims at nothing less than a
partial restitution of Paradise, which implies a transformation of the whole of mankind
through scientific progress.
This spectacular extension of the task of natural philosophy corresponds to two tasks
the natural scientist is to perform: the Inquiry of Causes and the Production of Effects.
(Bacon, 1963a, p. 346, III,4). The first only repeats the traditional telos of science, the
pursuit of truth, concretely the exploration of the causes of natural things. The second
purpose however opens a completely new horizon. Technological innovations are an
integral part of Baconian science and not just the result of mere possible applications of
scientific insights. Moreover, aiming to enlarge the Human Empire, Bacon loads the
formula Production of Effects with extreme significance, claiming that it is the effecting of
all (sic!) things possible (Bacon, 1963b, p. 156).
Scientific experiments and the unlimited production of new things can no longer stem
only from great individual thinkers like those philosophers in Antiquity; instead, they arise out
of or are produced by a social institution based on a division of labour. Besides the
experimental method, this vision of an institutional framework constitution is perhaps
Bacons most important contribution to the genesis of modern science. In his utopic vision
New Atlantis Bacon articulated the vision of an institutionalized science, the so-called House
of Salomon, which is also the centre of a new society. With its own hierarchical order, the
House of Salomon autonomously organises scientific investigations and experiments in the
numerous laboratories, completely separated from political interventions or directives.
In the context of his vision of science as a societal system, Bacon already envisages
systemic relations between technology, science and the economy. Technology, or in the
words of Bacon the mechanical arts, enables scientific progress, which in turn improves
technological instruments, and so on ad infinitum. Moreover, the systemic unity between
science and technology presupposes and encourages economic prosperity. Thus according
to Bacon, modern science will improve the material status not only of the ones own country
but all of mankind, for technological innovations will spread across the world without any
accompanying use of violence (Bacon, 1963c, p.113, I,129).
Although science should improve the living standard of the people, Bacon does not
subordinate science to material or even economic interests. The search for truth remains an
autonomous end purpose of science:

for that the contemplation of truth is a thing worthier and loftier than all utility and magnitude of
works and works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to
the comforts of life (Bacon, 1963c, p.110, I,124).

The second end of science, the maxim of the effecting of all things possible, also
transcends utilitarian perspectives. Moreover, Bacon raises the idea of an unbridled release
of all latent potentialities of man and nature to a sacred end of his natural philosophy, an
aspect that Perez Zagorin has rightly underlined:

Bacon did not look upon knowledge from a narrowly utilitarian standpoint. The end to which he
dedicated the achievements of the human intellect was also moral insofar as it served religion
and the welfare of mankind by showing through discoveries in natural philosophy the greatness of
gods works (Zagorin, 1998, p. 61).

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The utilitarian or rather philanthropic dimension of Baconian science is situated alongside

the two main ends of natural philosophy. The scientific community selects from the
overwhelming amount of new things those inventions which will promote the welfare of the
people. In New Atlantis the Father of Salomons House tells the European visitors about the
island of Bensalem:

We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall
be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those which
we think fit to keep secret: though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state, and some
not (Bacon, 1963b, p. 165).

In order to strictly protect science from political interests, Bacon transfers the entire
responsibility for both all research projects as well as their use for public wealth to the
scientific community.

2 The Crisis of the Baconian Project of Science

Nowadays we are living in a world where the Baconian utopia has become reality. Modern
science and technology have already transformed and are still transforming all societies
across the globe at an increasingly faster pace. The consequences for human life and the
ecological system have provoked a radical critique of Baconian science itself. In this context
I would like to single out two problems: Firstly, the ambiguous links between science and
economy, which are currently impacting on the institutional framework of modern science.
Secondly, we have to deal with the question whether Baconian science is leading the whole
of humankind into an ecological catastrophe.

2.1 The Neoliberal Transformation of Salomons House and its

Consequences
The systemic relations between science, technology and the economic system became an
th th
object of continuous reflection during the 18 and 19 centuries. For the first time, the new
philosophies of progress analysed the interdependence between the new societal systems
(science, technology, economics, education, politics, religion etc.). In this perspective both
Turgot and his counterpart Rousseau investigated the effects of modern science on moral
progress. It was Karl Marx, however, who identified that modern science was the most
important factor of productivity within the capitalist system. Hence, the relationship between
science and economics became one of the main topics of debate among European
intellectuals over the last two centuries.
In the 1960s the debates on modern science reached a new peak in the controversy
between Sir Carl Popper and the Frankfurt School (Adorno, 1970). We need to keep in mind
that both sides in the so-called positivism dispute held up the ideal of sciences autonomy.
Conservative intellectuals rejected indignantly the neo-Marxist critique of sciences
dependency on economic interests. Hard-fought controversies arose solely on the question
as to whether scientific autonomy is possible within the capitalist system or not. Meanwhile,
times have radically changed. Only a few decades later it seems as if we have moved into a
new era. In respect of the loss of geopolitical power, both Conservative parties and Social
Democrats tacitly adopted the Marxian diagnosis of science as the most important factor of
productivity and this has since become the central maxim of science policy in all Western
states. Instead of discussing critically the dependence of science on economic interests,

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policymakers publicly proclaim the unity between science and industry as a self-evident
programmatic guideline. In face of the increased competitive pressure in a globalized world,
critical reflections on the systemic complex between science-technology and economics are
regarded as nothing but an unworldly quirk.
However, any constructive critique of the subjection of science under economic
imperatives must not restrict itself to politics; it also needs to initiate a self-critique of the
current institutional arrangements erected by the scientific community itself. A brief historical
review of the last two centuries paints a sobering picture: The institutional arrangements of
modern science have either reflected ideological currents or indeed even maintained
structures which, seen politically, were long overcome or outdated. In the 19th and 20th
centuries for example, scientific institutions were organized in a quasi-feudal manner, with
the omnipotence of the German professor residing over his fiefdom as an illustrative symbol.
In the 1970s the universities promoted a considerable process of democratization inspired
by the social movements of the student revolt. In the neoliberal era of the last 20 years the
democratic structures in universities have been eliminated in the name of efficiency.
Neoliberalism however is not only an economic doctrine but a social theory. As Michel
Foucault analyzed in his lectures at the Collge de France, the social vision a neoliberal
theory aims at entails the transformation of all social institutions according to the logic of
competitiveness (Foucault, 2008, lecture 6). Thus, the ideal scientist is the scientific
manager who maximizes financial resources for research projects, expanding the range of
the material which thus produces more and more publications. The problem is not the idea
of competitiveness itself, if it is understood as fair contest in the search for high-quality
research, but that the internalization of quantitative criteria is encouraged. Spurred on by the
logic of competitiveness, the maximization of financial resources, publications, etc. becomes
an end in itself. Now, even Nobel Laureates like Peter Higgs frankly confesses that he would
not be productive enough for todays academic system because he published fewer than ten
papers after his groundbreaking work on the mechanism through which sub-atomic material
acquires mass was published (Aitkenhead, 2013). As is well known, the Critique of Pure
Reason was the first work Immanuel Kant published after a ten year break.
Moreover, the scientific system reproduces not only the logic of competitiveness and
entrepreneurship but also the neoliberal logic of social fragmentation. Just as the economic
system has produced more and more precarious jobs over the last few decades, so too
have universities, academic institutions and scientific funds produced an academic
precarious class that has to make do with part-time jobs, contemporary contracts, calculated
phases of unemployment etc. The whole system is based on a worldwide apparatus of
evaluations. Every article, every application for a scholarship must be evaluated by external
reviewers, who are selected by an internal commission.
To sum up: Salomons House is really in danger. On the one side, science is
threatened by the increasing dependency on private and multinational companies, a process
that is even propagated by almost all political parties. To illustrate the problem with only one
example: Scientific studies supported by pharmaceutical industry produce four times more
positive results as comparable studies compiled by government-funded research
institutions. On the other side, the logic of competitiveness and entrepreneurship with its
inherent imperatives of maximization, combined with the system of permanent evaluations,
have created a self-destructive dynamic. To give only one example: The market servicing
research funds contains dangerous incentives for lowering quality standards in order not to
jeopardize the prolongation for current research projects. Thus, the scientific system
produces a considerable amount of wasteful data that contaminates entire research fields.

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2.2 Baconian Science and the Ecological Crisis

Salomons House is faced with a second threat, one that has its roots in a problematic
legacy of Baconian science itself. As previously mentioned, Bacon conceives an extreme
vision, the enlarging of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible. The discovery
of nuclear power and recent scientific developments in the field of human genetics have
revealed the monstrosity of the Baconian vision. Against this background, Max Horkheimer,
Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Jonas and some feminist authors have criticized the Baconian
project of science as the origin of political totalitarianism and the ecological disaster.
Though experiments violently press nature into a new course, the main intention of
Baconion science is not mere subjugation of nature or its reduction to a material of human
manipulation, as Horkheimer and Adorno criticised in Dialectic of Enlightenment
(Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002/1947).

Although not a mathematician Bacon well understood the scientific temper which was to come
after him Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or
in its deference to worldly masters (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 2).

On the contrary, according to Bacon, the central task of experimental science is not simple
domination of nature but the unleashing of its richness, and this includes all latent
potentialities. Moreover, as Bacon saw it, nature undertakes its own experiments, as is
2
observable in irregular natural phenomena. Hence, Bacons philosophy of science aims at a
synergy between human creativity and the latent potentialities of nature. Towards effecting
of works all that man can do is to put together or put asunder natural bodies. The rest is
done by nature working within (Bacon, 1963c, p. 47, I,4). Thus, Bacon combines two
central ideas of Renaissance philosophy, the idea of an unlimited universe and the
reassessment of human creativity (Schelkshorn, 2009, pp. 95-205).
In contrast to Horkheimer and Adornos verdict, Bacons philosophy of science is
imbued with an overwhelming fascination for the unlimited diversity and richness of nature. It
3
is precisely this fascination that seduced Bacon to the extreme or even irrational vision of
the effecting all things possible, which then relocated modern science into a highly
ambiguous and dangerous zone.
Nevertheless, the ecological disaster is less the result of Baconian science as such,
but has far more to do with its integration into the market economy. The theoretical
foundations of a systemic union between science and business had already been laid in the
th
17 century. For instance, John Locke combined the idea of an unbridled release of all
hidden potentialities of nature with the economic idea of a limitless maximization of money
(Schelkshorn, 2009, pp. 549-593). Thus, the finite richness of nature is subjugated to the
virtual and limitless logic of money by an alchemical transmutation. It is mainly the idea of
limitless economic growth which has led humanity to the brink of an ecological abyss.

2 But when the spirit is neither wholly detained nor wholly discharged, but only makes trials and experiments within
its prison-house, and meets with tangible parts that are obedient and ready to follow (Bacon, 1963c, p. 196,
II,60)
3 Indeed the whole end of his [Bacons] philosophy is a non-rational vision of mans unlimited capacity to dominate
the universe (Vickers, 1968, p. 5).

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3 Final Remarks: The Task of Rebuilding

Salomons House
Modern science is one of the cornerstones of Western civilization. The crisis of modern
science thus inevitably implies a crisis of Western civilization, as Husserl had already
recognized with great acumen and expressed with the necessary clarity. Salomons House
is threatened both by distorted institutional frameworks and the extremely dangerous utopia
of limitless technological power.
I must concede that I have no simple solution for the complex challenge of reforming
the institutional framework of science. I only have the conviction that we cannot wait for
politicians; instead, scientists themselves have to mobilize all their intellectual energy to stop
self-destructive tendencies within the scientific system and defend the freedom of science
against neoliberal logic. A first step could be a new system of evaluation which does not
consist in a bureaucratic addition of the amount of financial resources, publications,
conference presentations, etc. An evaluation worthy of the name must include a permanent
and relentless disclosure of private and public financial flows; further, a detailed analysis of
the impact economic dependencies has on scientific results is needed. Such research
reports should also list socially relevant research projects which could not or only partially be
undertaken due to financial constraints.
However, at the same time it must be acknowledged that the technological dimension
of modern research requires certain restrictions on the freedom of science. At any rate,
modern societies must not leave the responsibility for research programs exclusively to the
scientific community as Bacon had proposed in New Atlantis. In some research areas ethics
committees have been installed. Ultimately, the whole of society must take responsibility for
technological innovations, for the decision on the production of new things and living beings
cannot be monopolized by scientific or ethical elites.
These two epochal challenges require a rebuilding of Salomons House from the
foundations up. One the one hand, we need far-reaching internal reforms of the institutional
framework; on the other hand, we have to open up modern science radically to society and
public democratic debates. As I see it both tasks are essential for a viable reconstruction of
Salomons House, and they can only be performed by intensified interdisciplinary research.
My hopes rest on a combination of system analysis and normative reflections, which have
already created the complex construction of a theoretical foundation to the democratic
constitutional state. System analysis is necessary to understand the dynamics of processes
both within the scientific system and the biosphere of the earth. Normative reflections have
to deal with the question as to how we want to live in the future. As modernity is determined
by the logic of maximization and endless growth, which has penetrated even into life-worlds
of the individual, one of the main challenges of practical and political philosophy is to
instigate a new thinking about limits, a thematic discussed in the social sciences under the
concept of sustainability. Against this backdrop, I can only applaud and would like to
congratulate you on the topic of your congress; it fuels the hope that science still retains its
capacity for self-criticism and self-reflection.

References
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About the Author

Hans Schelkshorn
Prof. Dr. Hans Schelkshorn is a philosopher at the University of Vienna. He studied philosophy, catholic
theology and classical philology in Vienna, Austria and Tbingen, Germany. He achieved his habilitation
in Philosophy at the University of Vienna in 2007. His main research fields are ethics, political
philosophy, philosophy of religion, and theories of modernity from an intercultural perspective. He is co-
founder of the journal "Polylog - Zeitschrift fr interkulturelles Philosophieren" (www.polylog.net) and
newly elected president of the Viennese Society of Intercultural Philosophy (WIGIP). He is one of the
specialists in Latin American philosophy in the German speaking world. Main publications: Ethik der
Befreiung. Einfhrung in die Philosophie Enrique Dussels (1992); Diskurs und Befreiung. Studien zur
philosophischen Ethik von Karl-Otto Apel und Enrique Dussel (1997), Entgrenzungen. Ein europischer
Beitrag zum philosophischen Diskurs der Moderne (2009).

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