Mathematical subtleties and scientific knowledge: Francis Bacon and mathematics, at the crossing of two traditions GIULIANO MORI* Abstract. This article engages the much-debated role of mathematics in Bacon’s philosophy and inductive method at large. The many references to mathematics in Bacon’s works are considered in the context of the humanist reform of the curriculum studiorum and, in particu- lar, through a comparison with the kinds of natural and intellectual subtlety as they are defined by many sixteenth-century authors, including Cardano, Scaliger and Montaigne. Additionally, this article gives a nuanced background to the ‘subtlety’ commonly thought to have been eschewed by Bacon and by Bacon’s self-proclaimed followers in the Royal Society of London. The aim of this article is ultimately to demonstrate that Bacon did not reject the use of mathematics in natural philosophy altogether. Instead, he hoped that following the Great Instauration a kind of non-abstract mathematics could be founded: a kind of mathematics which was to serve natural philosophy by enabling men to grasp the intrinsic subtlety of nature. Rather than mathematizing nature, it was mathematics that needed to be ‘naturalized’. Francis Bacon and mathematics: the critical tradition More, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries, Francis Bacon has been the object of major criticism from all sectors of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century intelligentsia. Harvey’s gibe concerning Bacon writing about natural philosophy in a Lord Chancellor’s fashion was never really rejected. This judgement has been shared by a number of historians of philosophy who have preferred to assign Bacon’s thought to the field of literature rather than to that of philosophy. Even amongst those who have acknowledged the philosophical nature of Bacon’s works, many have proposed them as an example of vulgar utilitarianism. 1 Amongst historians of science, Alexander Koyré concluded that Bacon failed to understand what was happening around him and that his role in the progress of science was ‘utterly negligible’; Jean Pelseneer went even further and called the Lord Verulam ‘an ignorant and impudent dilettante’. 2 More than anything, it seemed inexcusable to these critics that the alleged father of modern science should have denied the importance of mathematics and hypotheses in the fields of science and scientific reasoning. And, indeed, this view about Bacon’s * Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. Email: giulianomori@yahoo.com.au; gmori@ias.edu. 1 Cf. Justus von Liebig, Über F. Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung, Munich: Literarisch-Artistische Anstalt, 1863. 2 Cf. Alexandre Koyré, Etudes galiléennes, Paris: Hermann, 1966, p. 12; Jean Pelseneer, ‘Gilbert, Bacon, Galilée, Képler, Harvey et Descartes: Leur relations’, Isis (1932) 17, pp. 171–208, 177. BJHS, Page 1 of 21, 2016. © British Society for the History of Science 2016 doi:10.1017/S0007087416001163 http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007087416001163 Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. Princeton Univ, on 28 Nov 2016 at 14:09:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at