Wrestling with proteus: Francis Bacon and the "torture" of nature

ISIS

Volumn 90, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 81-94

  Pesic, Peter ^a  

^a ST JOHN S COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 0005573243     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/384242     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. Citations from Bacon refer to volume and page number in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Longmans, 1857-1874; rpt., New York: Garrett, 1968);
2. Vols. 1-7 include the Works,
3. Vols. 8-14 comprise The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Where two citations are given for the same passage, the bracketed one refers to the Latin original; for the epigraph: 4.29 [1.141].
4. Bacon styles himself a bucinator at 4.372 [1.579]; see Paolo Rossi, "Bacon's Idea of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 25-46, on p. 26.
5. For critics of Bacon's "torture" of nature see, e.g., Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), pp. 164-190;
6. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 35-37;
7. and Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 113, 237.
8. Note that Keller repeats the claim that Bacon advocated "putting nature on the rack" in her later collection Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 57.
9. Elizabeth Hanson treats torture as "a paradigm for discovery" and consistently links Bacon's roles "as a champion of the discovery of nature's secrets and as a persistent practitioner of torture" in Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 19-54, 122-149, esp. pp. 20, 25.
10. The imputation of rape has been trenchantly addressed in Alan Soble, "In Defense of Bacon," Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1995, 25:192-215, which discusses the matter of torture on pp. 205-207;
11. this essay was reprinted (with additions and corrections) in A House Built on Sand, ed. Noretta Koertge (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 195-215.
12. See also the insightful article by Iddo Landau, "Feminist Criticism of Metaphors in Bacon's Philosophy of Science," Philosophy, 1998, 73:47-61, which discusses the metaphor of torture on pp. 51, 54.
13. Leibniz's remark comes from a letter of 1696 to Gabriel Wagner concerning the value of logic: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. Leroy E. Loemker, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1958), p. 456.
14. This passage is cited in Alan G. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 87 n 6, 212: "although the sentiment is Baconian, the phrase is from Leibniz." I thank Kenneth Cardwell for drawing my attention to these citations.
15. For a detailed discussion of Leibniz's position see Peter Pesic, "Nature on the Rack: Leibniz's Attitude towards Judicial Torture and the 'Torture' of Nature," Studia Leibnitiana, 1997, 29(2):189-197.
16. Ernst Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J. P. Pettegrove (Austin: Univ. Texas Press, 1953), p. 48.
17. Charles Webster writes that "nature would be 'tortured' into revealing her secrets" in The Great Instauration (London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 338.
18. See also Howard White, Peace among the Willows (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), p. 1.
19. Soble, "In Defense of Bacon" (cit. n. 2), concentrates on extreme views; I am more concerned with these more moderate critiques. A brilliant discussion of these matters is given in John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), p. 35; I am indebted to this outstanding work on many points.
20. Kenneth Cardwell also notes that he has not found "in Bacon an unambiguous instruction to rack nature," though he does not comment further; see Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor," in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990), pp. 269-289, on p. 285 n 4.
21. The most extreme form these polemics took are the unpublished early works: "The Masculine Birth of Time," "Thoughts and Conclusions," and "The Refutation of Philosophies," trans. in Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 61-133. It is not clear whether the more moderate critique voiced in the Novum Organum is the result of prudent restraint or of mature reconsideration.
22. The crucial passages detailing these structures of "learned experience" are Novum Organum 4.94-98 [1.202-206] and De augmentis scientiarum 4.413-421 [1.622-633]. I discuss these "tables" and their relation to crypt-analytic tables in Peter Pesic, The Labyrinth of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming), Ch. 6.
23. For a review of Bacon's notion of experiment see Michel Malherbe, "Bacon's Notion of Science," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen (cit. n. 2), pp. 75-98. Concerning the original sense of the words see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "experience," "experiment."
24. On the interrelation between vital and inanimate spirits see Graham Rees, "Bacon's Speculative Philosophy," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen, pp. 121-145, on pp. 136-141;
25. Rees, "Matter Theory: A Unifying Factor in Bacon's Natural Philosophy," Ambix, 1977, 24:110-125;
26. and Rees, "Francis Bacon and Spiritus Vitalis," in Spiritus IV: Colloquio internazionale, ed. Marta Fattori and Massimo Bianchi (Rome: Ateneo, 1984), pp. 265-281.
27. Besides this treatment (6.725-726 [6:651-652]), Bacon also treated Proteus in the Parasceve (4.257 [1.399]) and De augmentis scientiarum (4.298, 4.420-421 [1.500, 1.632]). These passages are substantially the same, in language and meaning, as the version in Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. Other passages use the imagery of "vexing" or "squeezing" without explicit reference to Proteus, though with the same sense: Description of the Intellectual Globe 5.506, 5.512 [3.729, 3.735]; Great Instauration 4.29 [1.141]; Novum Organum 4.95 [1.203]. On Bacon's use of classical myth see Charles W. Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon (New York: Octagon, 1971), which points out that "most of the mythological interpretations of a scientific nature which delight us in Bacon's works may be traced to the chief contemporary authority on such matters, Natalis Comes" (pp. 145-146);
28. Lemmi treats Proteus on pp. 91-98. See also Barbara Carman Garner, "Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes, and the Mythological Tradition," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1970, 33:264-291.
29. For general background see A. Bartlett Giamatti, "Proteus Unbound: Some Versions of the Sea God in the Renaissance," in The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 437-475, which emphasizes the sinister aspects of Proteus.
30. Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), treats Bacon's use of parable on pp. 179-193.
31. Elizabeth Sewall, The Orphic Voice (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 126-127, takes Bacon's "interrogation" of Proteus to mean plain torture.
32. John Briggs gives an insightful reading of this passage in Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), pp. 32-40; however, I will argue that Bacon does not "chain Proteus to the rack" (see his p. 35).
33. See Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1964), p. 450.
34. Bacon reiterates his characterization of thrice-great Proteus in Descriptio globi intellectualis (1612). See the new Oxford edition: Francis Bacon, Philosophical Studies c. 1611-c. 1619, ed. Graham Rees (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), Vol. 6, pp. 112-113; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.512 [3.735].
35. See Homer, Odyssey 4.365-570. Briggs notes that, though these "bonds" are absent in Homer even in the 1537 Latin translation, they are mentioned in Virgil's treatment of Aristaeus questioning Proteus (Georgics 4.399-405). However, Briggs concludes that other Renaissance mythographers as well as these ancient sources indicate that the interrogators "overpower [Proteus] without violating his divinity": Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), p. 35.
36. Giamatti, "Proteus Unbound" (cit. n. 9), pp. 438, 467, cites a passage in Erasmus's well-known Enchiridion showing Proteus as a figure of the evil passions of men that require binding with chains. I address the question of artistic representations of Proteus in Peter Pesic, "Shapes of Proteus in Renaissance Art" (in preparation).
37. In his account of the fable of Ericthonius Bacon explains that art "endeavours by much vexing of bodies to force Nature to its will and conquer and subdue her. . . . Such things may often be observed among chemical productions, and among mechanical subtleties and novelties" (6.736). See also 4.29 [1.14], 4.257 [1.399], 4.298 [1.500]. I thank Graham Rees for drawing these passages to my attention.
38. This translation is from Bacon, Philosophical Studies, ed. Rees (cit. n. 10), Vol. 6, pp. 100-101; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.506 [3.729].
39. Here the critical passages are Bacon's account of the Sphinx (6.755-758), Prometheus (6.745-753), and Orpheus (6.762-764). I have treated the purification of the "sons of science" in Peter Pesic, "Desire, Science, and Polity: Francis Bacon's Treatment of Eros," Interpretation (forthcoming);
40. and Pesic, Labyrinth of Nature (cit. n. 7), Chs. 3, 4.
41. The use of heroic topoi in Bacon is discussed in John M. Steadman, "Beyond Hercules: Bacon and the Scientist as Hero," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 1971, 4:3-47.
42. See also Moody E. Prior, "Bacon's Man of Science," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1954, 15:348-370,
43. rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968), pp. 140-163.
44. For a useful treatment of the concept of science as a hunt (venatio) see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 269-300.
45. See the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "vex," "vexation." Shakespeare's Ariel speaks of the "still-vexed Bermoothes [Bermudas]" (Tempest 1.2.229), meaning the ceaseless tumult of the waves. Ben Jonson uses "vexation" to indicate shaping and strengthening: "As the wind doth try strong trees, / Who by vexation grow more sound and firm" (Sejanus 4.1.69-70). Elsewhere Jonson evokes "the vexations, and the martyrizations / Of mettalls, in the worke" of alchemical transmutation (Alchemist 2.5.20-21), indicating that vexation accompanies the transformation of base metals into noble perfection.
46. Vexation is distinct from torture, even when they occur together: "Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! He hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer" (Shakespeare, King Lear 5.3.314-317). In contrast with the physical torments of the rack, vexation acts in the inwardness of the soul. Shakespeare's Egeus comes before Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream "full of vexation" at the behavior of his daughter Hermia (1.1.22). Later in the play Oberon refers to all "this night's accidents" as "the fierce vexation of a dream" (4.1.74), contrasting inward vividness with outward unreality. In his casuistic defense of godly suicide, Biathanatos (written ca. 1609), John Donne recounts the story of St. Appollonia, who, "after the persecutors had beat out her teeth, and vexed her with many other tortures, when she was presented to the fire, being inflamed with a more burning fire of the Holy Ghost, broke from the Officers hands, and leapt into the fire": John Donne, Selected Prose, ed. Helen Gardner and Timothy Healy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), p. 34. Vexation refers to inward anguish and differs from physical torture: her vexation ceased as she gave herself freely to death.
47. The Authorized Version renders Ecclesiastes 1:14 as "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) Robert Burton describes the "vexation of spirit and anguish of minde" that follow quarrels (2.3.7.422). Abraham Fraunce also speaks, in Lawyers Logike (1588), of "the perpetual vexation of spirit, and continual consumption of body, incident to every scholar." Donne compares this vexation to the pool of Bethsaida in which "there was no health till the water was troubled" by divine power. Here "troubling" manifests the infusion of grace. He is referring to the question whether martyrs such as St. Appollonia were justified in going voluntarily to their deaths; see Biathanatos, in Donne, Selected Prose, ed. Gardner and Healy, p. 28.
48. In quoting at 4.32 I follow the more literal translation of the Latin original given in Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5), pp. 271-272; see also p. 269. Bacon here is quoting one James Whitelocke, who was accused in June 1613 of traducing a royal commission and who "termed the Commissioners therein Inquisitors, to make it seem more odious."
49. The distinction between abuse and legitimate vexation also pertains to the training of horses. Bacon states that "the horse is not to be accounted the less of which will not do well without the spur" (7.80); not needing the spur "is to be reckoned [rather] a delicacy than a virtue." Here the spur is not an instrument of cruelty but "the ordinary instrument of horsemanship," which, Briggs observes, "does not violate the virtue it consistently attends and stimulates": Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), p. 111.
50. Bacon is referring to Telesio and his opponents in De principiis atque originibus (ca. 1610-1620); see Bacon, Philosophical Studies, ed. Rees (cit. n. 10), Vol. 6, pp. 246-247; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.488.
51. In his Latin translation of this passage Bacon substituted for "mathematics" the logical technique of "dichotomies" (dichotomias), the exclusion of impossibilities to arrive at the truth, that was advocated by Peter Ramus, whom Bacon scorns for using "the rack of his summary method" on facts, which "soon lose their truth, which oozes or skips away, leaving him to garner only dry and barren trifles. . . . Ramus out of the real world made a desert": Philosophy of Francis Bacon, trans. Farrington (cit. n. 6), p. 64.
52. For discussion of Bacon and Ramus see Jardine, Francis Bacon (cit. n. 9), pp. 41-54, 169-171;
53. and Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), pp. 189-192, 201-214.
54. Though here Bacon treats mathematics as a form of torture, elsewhere he left room for a new mathematics that could make fruitful connection with experience. Graham Rees has argued that "the scope of his mathematical concerns was far wider than is usually granted" in "Mathematics and Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1986, 40:399-426.
55. In a passage in the Sylva sylvarum on the production of sound by bowed instruments, Bacon remarks that "the bow tortureth the string continually, and thereby holdeth it in a continual trepidation" (2.398). This singular usage suggests that he may at times mean by "torture" rather mild alterations of nature. It may also recall Plato's ironic reference in Republic 531a to "those good men who harass the strings and put them to the torture [βασανίζοντα ς], racking them on the pegs [στρεβλου̌ντα ς]," which compares the torturers of slaves to musicians who trust their ears rather than their minds; see The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic, 1968), p. 210.
56. For Bacon's study of sound see Rees, "Mathematics and Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy," pp. 416-417;
57. and Penelope M. Gouk, "Music in Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy," in Francis Bacon: Terminologia e fortuna nel XVII secolo, ed. Marta Fattori (Rome: Ateneo, 1984), pp. 139-154.
58. Harvey Wheeler has argued that "Bacon's science derived ultimately from his jurisprudence" in "The Invention of Modern Empiricism: Juridical Foundations of Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science," Law Library Journal, 1983, 76:78-120, on p. 119.
59. For a helpful overall account of Bacon's legal works see Daniel R. Coquillette, Francis Bacon (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992).
60. See also Paul Kocher, "Francis Bacon on the Science of Jurisprudence," J. Hist. Ideas, 1957, 18:3-26,
61. rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon, ed. Vickers (cit. n. 14), pp. 167-194;
62. Wheeler, "Science out of Law," in Toward a Humanistic Science of Politics, ed. Dalmas H. Nelson and Richard L. Sklar (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press America, 1983), pp. 101-144;
63. John C. Hogan and Mortimer D. Schwartz, "On Bacon's 'Rules and Maximes' of the Common Law," Law Library J., 1983, 76:48-77;
64. and Mark S. Neustadt, "The Making of the Instauration: Science, Politics, and Law in the Career of Francis Bacon" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 1987).
65. On Bacon's manner of interrogation see Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5);
66. and Kenneth Cardwell, "Inquisitio Rerum Ipsarum: Francis Bacon and the Interrogation of Nature" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. California, Berkeley, 1986).
67. Antonio Pérez-Ramos remarks that Bacon's "forensic image of the stern judge" leads to "the ethos of domination" in "Bacon's Legacy," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen (cit. n. 2), pp. 311-334, on p. 330;
68. however, the image of the judge connotes the search for justice, not merely domination. There is a valuable survey of the political and legal dimensions of Bacon's scientific projects in Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 141-165; however, Martin does not cite the earlier works of Wheeler and Coquillette.
69. For the nature and practice of judicial torture in ancient and modern times see David Jardine, A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England Previously to the Commonwealth (London: Baldwin & Craddock, 1837);
70. James Heath, Torture and English Law (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982);
71. John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1977);
72. Edward Peters, Torture (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986);
73. and Page DuBois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge, 1991).
74. Slaves were required to be examined under torture, called the touchstone [βάσανος], a reference to the dark-colored quartz or jasper (called also lapis Lydius) that reveals genuine gold by the mark it makes. Even a freeman could be tortured in capital cases or on suspicion of treason. See, e.g., Euripides, Hippolytus 924-926; and Pindar, Pythian Ode 10.67, Nemean Ode 8.20-21.
75. DuBois, Torture and Truth, pp. 9-38, gives other examples.
76. Demosthenes asserted that "no statements made as a result of βάσανος have ever proved to be untrue" (Orations 30.37). Socrates applies the βάσανος at critical moments in the dialogues: "in the sort of situation in which we are caught, it's a necessity to twist around every speech and put it to the torture [βασανίζειν]" (Theaetetus 191c). Socrates does not merely hunt down the sophist; he also proposes to put an important speech of "the great Parmenides" to the touchstone, "which, if it should be put to a fair degree of torture [μέτρια βασανισθείς], would as certain as anything make its own confession" (Sophist 237b). Most of all, Socrates turns this touchstone on his own ideas: "Let's take them up and put them to the torture [βασανιζω̂μεν] - but, rather, let's do it to ourselves" (Theaetetus 203a). These quotations are from Plato's Theaetetus and Plato's Sophist, trans. Seth Benardete (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1986).
77. On the absence of torture in English common law see Clifford Hall, "Bacon and the Legality of Torture," Baconiana, 1989, 188:24-37.
78. See Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (cit. n. 25), pp. 81-128, for a careful review of the warrants to torture given in England from 1540 to 1640, particularly pp. 90, 129, for Bacon's part in five such cases.
79. See also Nieves Mathews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 283-294;
80. and Hall, "Some Perspectives on the Use of Torture in Bacon's Time and the Question of His 'Virtue,'" Anglo-American Law Review, 1989, 18:289-321.
81. Nieves Mathews has clarified Bacon's reluctant participation in the use of torture and the reservations he expressed to the king in Francis Bacon, pp. 283-294.
82. Her careful research corrects many of the misunderstand" ings expressed on this matter in the Times Literary Supplement (London), 11 and 25 Oct. 1996; there is further correspondence on 15, 22, and 29 Nov. and 20 and 27 Dec. 1996. At the trial of the earl of Essex Coke said that the queen had damaged the Crown's cause by excluding the use of torture; see Mathews, Francis Bacon, pp. 284-285. Though Hanson repeatedly asserts in Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (cit. n. 2) that Bacon was a cooperative "rack-master," "apparently the only English lawyer who actually asserted that torture was permissible in English juridical practice" (pp. 31, 25-26), her book does not cite or address Mathews's devastating rebuttal of these claims, nor does she cite Coquillette's careful treatment of Bacon's legal works and career in Francis Bacon (cit. n. 24).
83. Wheeler, "Invention of Modem Empiricism" (cit. n. 24), p. 108, shows in detail the elements of the empirical legal science that Bacon brought to his court.
84. See also Barbara J. Shapiro, "Sir Francis Bacon and the Mid-Seventeenth-Century Movement for Law Reform," American Journal of Legal History, 1980, 24:331-362.
85. "The suit is civil: it concerns the recovery of a right, rather than punishment of a criminal": Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5), pp. 278-284, which also discusses the Star Chamber summary procedure ore tenus, in which the defendant is judged on his own testimony (ex ore suo).
86. For clarification of the practices of the Courts of Chancery and of the Star Chamber see G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 150-152, 158-163, 167-171.
87. As Elton notes, the Star Chamber was, "in a sense, the chancellor's court of criminal jurisdiction," though it was "unable to touch life or property" and "did not use torture in the course of the trial" (pp. 169-171). This corrects Hanson's implication that torture is among "the more sinister procedures of the Star Chamber": Hanson, Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (cit. n. 2), pp. 127-128, 37-39, 135. In contrast, the Court of Chancery dealt with issues of equity arising from the common law.
88. Bacon, "Masculine Birth of Time," in Philosophy of Francis Bacon, trans. Farrington (cit. n. 6), pp. 62, 72. Soble also makes the point about nature as wife in "In Defense of Bacon" (cit. n. 2).
89. In the Sylva sylvarum he says that natural gold is formed "where little heat cometh" (2.449). See Stanton J. Linden, "Francis Bacon and Alchemy: The Reformation of Vulcan," J. Hist. Ideas, 1974, 35:547-560, on p. 558.
90. For a helpful discussion of Bacon's use of the image of the garden to characterize scientific inquiry see Michèle Le Doeuff, "Man and Nature in the Gardens of Science," in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts, ed. Sessions (cit. n. 5), pp. 119-138.
91. Discussing the ways in which a "window" into another man's heart might be found that would help one guide one's fortune, Bacon remarks that "the poet doth elegantly call passions tortures [Torturas], that urge men to confess their secrets: Vino tortus est et ira [tortured by wine and wrath; Horace Epistles 1.18.38]" (3.458, 5.61 [1.774]). Bacon goes on to enumerate other ways in which men "open themselves; especially if they be put to it with a counter-dissimulation, according to the proverb of Spain, Di mentira, y sacaras verdad, Tell a lie and find a truth" (5.61). These methods are essentially tortures, and they all treat their object as a means to their end, rendered a mere instrumentality and a slave by deceit. However, this model of Machiavellian working does not apply to nature, which cannot be deceived as people can.
92. For his immediate followers see my discussion of Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, John Evelyn, and Joseph Glanvill in Peter Pesic, "Eviscerating Nature: Bacon's Successors and the Defense of Experiment" (unpublished MS).