This passage is from Bacon's On Learning, and the original text is as follows:
"History makes people wise, poems witty, mathematics exact, natural philosophy profound, ethics grave and logic rhetoric able to contend."
Bacon has always attached great importance to history. He himself wrote History of Henry VIII and Outline of the History of Great Britain. The historical knowledge displayed in these works also qualifies him to enter the ranks of historians. So the phrase "reading history makes people wise" can be regarded as his own experience in managing history. However, we should not read history only for personal utilitarian motives. Objectively speaking, history not only provides us with Yin Jian, but also carries the genes of culture. Even those who laugh at historical textual research should pay attention to the historical effect of textual research: in the era when lies are prevalent, thanks to textual research, we have maintained the will and ability of intellectuals to seek truth. This is the primary reason why I value the Gan school.
There may not be many people who object to the saying that "reading poetry makes people beautiful", but in our society that despises poets, it is of great significance to review this sentence. Heidegger said, "Where there is poverty, there is poetry". Poetry does not necessarily produce poets, but poets can remain poetic. Poets are personified and poetic. They are more sensitive than ordinary people, so they can better understand the pain and crisis of an era. We can even say that they are the true representatives of the "sensitive spirit" called by the French philosopher Pascal. However, poetry is not only the source of literature, but also the epitome of literature. The decline of poetry reflects the decline of literature, because we cultivate spirituality, nourish the soul and cultivate and enhance a nation's imagination through poetry. It is hard for us to imagine that literature that despises imagination can be called literature in the true sense.
Mathematics has always been regarded as the crown of all sciences. Marx even said that "a science can only become a real science if it successfully uses mathematics". The word "mathematics" has existed for a long time in ancient Greece, but it has been widely extended in Bacon's time. At that time, a commonly used word was "pan-mathematics", and music theory research, astronomy and land survey were all included in generalized mathematics. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the word "mathematics" gained the meaning we know today. Geometry-based mathematics has gradually become synonymous with "precision science" and a basic tool that all sciences try to use. For centuries, people thought that the foundation of mathematics was absolutely stable. It was not until the twentieth century that three schools of mathematics appeared: logicism, intuitionism and formalism, that people found that the original ideas needed to be re-examined. Bacon's wisdom lies in that he not only regards mathematics as a scientific tool, but also finds that mathematics has the function of self-cultivation. He believes that an indirect benefit of learning mathematics is to make people who are not specialized in their minds become single-minded. When I was in college, I took the dream of mathematicization of philosophy and took the course of mathematics department for three years. After more than twenty years, my dream has not come true, and it is impossible to come true, but studying mathematics is really good for restraining my ambition and cultivating good habits. Bacon is not a mathematician, but his remarks about mathematics are worth pondering.
The English text of The Study of Things is natural philosophy, which is literally translated as "natural philosophy". Modernity refers to the study of the most general principles of nature, which is somewhat different from today's "natural philosophy". The basic disciplines such as "physics", "biology" and "chemistry" we are talking about today all belong to modern "natural philosophy". Therefore, Mr. Shui Tiantong translated this word into "natural history" when he translated the Anthology of Bacon. This translation is generally acceptable, but considering that Bacon aims to highlight the philosophical nature of this subject, that people often use natural history to express what we usually call "natural history", and that all ancient Chinese philosophers have talked about the theory of "learning from things", I changed "natural history" to "natural things" to highlight its "poor learning" characteristics.
As for Bacon's "morality", we should see the difference and connection between it and "ethics". Hegel once made a distinction between "morality" and "ethics" to the effect that morality is in terms of personal cultivation and ethics is in terms of social customs. In today's words, ethics is the externalization of morality, and morality is the internalization of ethics. The word morality also means "spirit" in English, which is related to Latin mos, namely "habit" and "mood" in etymology. The word "ethics" originally meant "fashion" or "custom" in ancient Greece. By the time Aristotle wrote the Ethics of Nicodemus Kyle, it had been really linked with "virtue". Now we often use "ethics" and "morality" together, which is also close to China's ancient explanation of morality: what we get from others outside, we get from ourselves inside.
Bacon's "logic" here still refers to the traditional Aristotle logic, specifically, it refers to the syllogism logic. Before18th century, information technology and rhetoric were compulsory courses for all students. But before the symbolic logic created by Leibniz and Frege and the inductive logic created by Bacon were accepted, logic was really just a tool of what Bacon called "eloquence". Today, logic has made unprecedented development, and many foreign universities attach great importance to students' logic training. On the other hand, in China, the slogan of academic innovation resounded through the sky, but the team of logic research declined day by day, and logic teaching was not taken seriously. Aren't you sad?
Bacon also attached great importance to rhetoric, and his works achieved the perfect unity of thought and rhetorical skills. But in the17th century, rhetoric began to decline in the west. Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz and others criticized rhetoric, and by the end of the eighteenth century, rhetoric was close to decline. Nietzsche later taught rhetoric when there was only one student in class. He just drove the whole class home, drinking beer and giving lectures. I'm afraid this situation was unexpected by gorgias or Tissias, the founders of rhetoric. The ancient meaning of the word "rhetoric" in Greece originally meant "flowing water". Unexpectedly, this flowing water stopped for more than a century, and it was not until the birth of new rhetoric that a new flow appeared. This is related to the fact that classical rhetoric is isolated from the development of linguistics, poetics and philosophy and limited to the study of figures of speech. As a result, rhetoric has been reduced to the point of no learning.
Bacon's Theory of Learning is full of incisive thoughts, which is fruitful for learning. His beautiful writing is not only his learning experience, but also his learning guide. He not only noticed that learning can increase talents, but also noticed that learning can exercise nature; He not only noticed that learning can change temperament, but also noticed that learning can remedy mental defects. His knowledge is written on paper, especially in his brilliant life.
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