Tag Archives: Francis Bacon

tomorrow: not rotating on the great cosmic wheel

The modern future was born, according to one precise dating, in the year 1770, when a Parisian hack writer named Louis-Sebastien Mercier wrote a book called L’an 2440 in which he set out to predict the blissful state of human … Continue reading

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the future is not what it was

…Our notions of the future have not only varied,they have also changed greatly in the course of time. The future, if nothing else, has a past-our own conception of it included. The modern future was born, according to one precise … Continue reading

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everything is broken

Narrative momentum. The very element lacking in our daily life. Are sort seems to be what Walter Benjamin called “messy antics” ; making new out of the scrap heap of discard, an early perception of appropriation and genre bending that … Continue reading

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trampling on the idea of progress

Is history without meaning, without power and without hope ? … …Even if professionals hold up their hands in horror at the idea of drawing lessons from history, others, far less capable, do not. Toynbee had no hesitation in trampling … Continue reading

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couch sweet potatoes

Two undraped ladies; each with troubles enough of their own. Not only look-alikes but contemporaries, each of them took a prominent part in a minor revolution. Adah Menken was a kind of nineteenth-century Marilyn Monroe, and like her a peripheral … Continue reading

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tottering Aristotle: the web spinners

Great examples of the illustration of the new age of science. Francis Bacon’s The Great Instauration followed a century of immense activity in the sciences, after discoveries in astronomy by Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler and galileo; after Gilbert’s experiments with … Continue reading

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new atlantis: caves of custom

If one now asks why science arose as it did, it was Francis bacon which spread its doctrines. It is evident that the geographical dicoveries of his time, and the circumnavigation of the earth, had promoted an independent examination of … Continue reading

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utopia: loitering in Icaria

Not content with the world as it is, people have always tried to imagine a world as it might become. it seems that old man time though has served to darken utopian visions in more ways than one… From the … Continue reading

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judging a cover by its book

Biblical prophecy is always a fascinating subject, dealing as it does with the hope of golden age, a repairing of the world, a making whole, a redemption mixed with the equal propensity for apocalyptic destruction. It predates the secular utopianism … Continue reading

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have utopia will travel

and to the nightmare. Dissatisfied with the world as it exists, people have always tried to imagine the world as it might become. Time, though, seems to have darkened out utopian visions in more ways than one…. For nearly two … Continue reading

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