“Reading history makes people wise, reading poetry makes people smart, mathematics makes people precise, the study of things makes people profound, moral philosophy makes people solemn, logic and rhetoric make people eloquent.” This famous quote by Bacon has long been known to readers in our country. Recently, I re-read Bacon's original work. Although I feel that the Chinese translation of this famous quote is enough to reproduce Bacon's far-sighted thoughts and wisdom, I still feel that further elaboration is necessary.
This passage comes from Bacon's "Of Studies", the original text is as follows:
"Historiesmakemanwise,poetswitty,themathematicssubtle,naturalphilosophydeep,moralgrave,logic and rhetoric abletocontend."
Bacon has always attached great importance to history. He himself wrote "The History of Henry VIII" and "An Outline of the History of Great Britain". The historical knowledge displayed in these works also qualifies him to enter the ranks of historians. Therefore, the sentence "reading history makes people wise" can be regarded as his own experience in governing history. However, we should not read history solely out of personal utilitarian motives. Objectively speaking, history not only provides us with lessons, but also carries the genes of culture. Even those who laugh at historical textual research should also pay attention to the historical effect of textual research: in an era when lies are prevalent, it is thanks to textual research that we maintain the will and ability of the intellectual class to seek truth. This is the primary reason why I highly recommend the Qianjia School.
"Reading poetry makes people beautiful" will probably not be opposed by many people, but in our society that despises poets, repeating this sentence is of great significance. Heidegger once said, "Wherever there is poverty, there is poetry." Poetic nature may not produce poets, but having poets can preserve poetic nature. The poet is the personified poetic nature. They are more sensitive than ordinary people, and therefore can better understand the pain and crisis of an era. We can even say that they are the true representatives of what the French philosopher Pascal called the "spirit of sensitivity". However, poetry is not only the source of literature, but also literature in miniature. The decline of poetry reflects the decline of literature, because we use poetry to nourish our spirituality, nourish our hearts, and cultivate and enhance the imagination of a nation. It is difficult to imagine that literature that despises imagination can still be called literature in the true sense.
Mathematics has always been regarded as the crown of all sciences. Marx even said, "A science can only become a real science when it successfully uses mathematics." The word "mathematics" has long existed in ancient Greece, but in the era when Bacon lived, the word had a very broad denotation. At that time, a commonly used word was "universal mathematics". The study of music theory, astronomy and land surveying were all included in the broad sense. of mathematics. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the word "mathematics" acquired roughly the meaning we understand it today. Mathematics, modeled after geometry, has since gradually become synonymous with "exact science" and the basic tool that all science attempts to use. For centuries, people believed that the foundation of mathematics was absolutely solid. It was not until the 20th century that the debates between the three major mathematical schools of "logicism", "intuitionism" and "formalism" emerged. Original concepts need to be re-examined. Bacon's insight was that he not only used mathematics as a scientific tool, but also found that mathematics had the effect of cultivating one's moral character. He believes that an indirect benefit of studying mathematics is that it can make people who are unfocused become focused. When I was in college, I audited courses in the mathematics department for three years with the dream of mathematicalizing philosophy. More than twenty years have passed, and my dream has not come true and is unlikely to come true, but studying mathematics is indeed good for reining in my wild mind and cultivating fine habits. Although Bacon was not a mathematician, his high theory of mathematics is worth pondering.
The original English text of "Gewu Zhi Xue" is natural philosophy, which is literally translated as "natural philosophy". In modern times, it refers to the study of the most general principles of nature, which is somewhat similar to what people today call "natural philosophy". different. What we call "physics", "biology", "chemistry" and other basic disciplines today are all included in the modern "natural philosophy". Therefore, Mr. Shui Tiantong translated this word as "natural history" when translating "Collected Works of Francis Bacon".
This translation is generally acceptable, but considering that Bacon aimed to highlight the philosophical nature of this knowledge, and also considering that people often use natural history to express what we usually call "natural history", and also considering that our country's sages said "the study of things leads to knowledge" "In terms of learning, I will temporarily change the word "natural history" to "investigation of things" to highlight its characteristic of "studying things and exploring principles."
As for what Bacon calls "morality", we should see its differences and connections with "ethics". Hegel once distinguished between "morality" and "ethics", to the effect that morality refers to personal cultivation, while ethics refers to social customs. In today's terms, ethics is the external expression of morality, and morality is the internalization of ethics. The word Moral also means "spirit" in English, and its etymology is related to the Latin word mos, that is, "habit", and also related to "mood". The word "ethics" originally meant "mores" or "customs" in ancient Greece. By the time Aristotle wrote "Nicomachean Ethics", it had been truly connected with "virtue". Nowadays, we often use "ethics" and "morality" together, which is close to the explanation of morality by ancient Chinese: external gains come from others, and internal gains come from oneself.
The "logic" Bacon refers to here still refers to traditional Aristotelian logic, specifically, syllogistic logic. Before the eighteenth century, it and rhetoric were compulsory subjects for all students. But before the symbolic logic founded by Leibniz and Frege and the inductive logic started by Bacon were accepted, logic was indeed just a tool of "eloquent" as Bacon said. Today, logic has achieved unprecedented development, and many foreign universities attach great importance to students' logic training. Looking back at our country, the slogan of academic innovation is ringing in the sky, but the team of logic research is shrinking day by day, and logic teaching is not taken seriously. Isn't it sad!
Bacon also attached great importance to rhetoric, and his works achieved the perfect unity of thought and rhetorical skills. But by the seventeenth century rhetoric had begun to decline in the West. Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz and others ridiculed rhetoric. By the end of the eighteenth century, rhetoric was on the verge of decline. When Nietzsche later taught rhetoric, there was only one student in attendance, so he simply held the class at home and drank beer while lecturing. This situation was probably something that Gorgias or Tissias, the founders of rhetoric, had never thought of. The ancient meaning of the word "rhetoric" in Greece originally meant "flowing water." Unexpectedly, this flowing water stopped flowing for more than a century. It was not until the birth of new rhetoric that new streams emerged. This is related to the fact that classical rhetoric cut itself off from the development of linguistics, poetics and philosophy, and also related to the fact that it limited itself to the study of figures of speech. As a result, rhetoric was reduced to a state of having skills but no learning.
Bacon's "discussions on learning" are full of outstanding insights, and his academic achievements can be said to be fruitful. His beautiful articles are not only his experience of learning, but also his guide to learning. He not only noticed that learning can increase talents, but also that learning can temper one's nature; he not only noticed that learning can change one's temperament, but also noticed that learning can remedy mental defects. His knowledge is written on paper, and even more so in his glorious life.
This is the online version of ``Change it again