Here is my Francis Bacon-bit again. I have always accredited Francis Bacon as dividing knowledge into reason and revelation for taxonomy purposes ie for ease of understanding knowledge. In attempting to find a simple reference I searched to no avail but I gained greater respect of his body of work in which I see Buddhism!! Please see Bacon-bit BELOW for a limited reference.

Bacon was not the problem although this was an Oppenheimer error. Following his dichotomy, over the centuries (since 1605) academia, being the bastion of knowledge, has defined reason as science and revelation as non-science or religion; academia now eschews revelation or religion as not being part of knowledge. This cleaving of knowledge was never Bacon's intention but neither was Hiroshima in the mind of Oppenheimer. This Hidden Axiom of Science has the greatest implications.

One corollary of this axiom is verification. If "hypothetical knowledge" is to be accepted as part of academia, it must be subjected to verification by scientific method. Over the centuries scientific method has developed in line with the focus on reason, and through this focus has been integrally linked with the reason as science. In other words scientific method would not accept a "hypothetical revelation" as knowledge. This important Hidden Corollary of Science would be that revelation can never be proven as knowledge by scientific method.

Bacon-bit BELOW:- As I use the above Bacon-bit regularly I ought to study "The Advancement of Learning" more thoroughly, but as I neither desire academic rigour nor recognition I just make the statement of the Bacon-bit. When I read the quote below, I am more impressed with his acceptance of "reason and revelation" (although it is something contemporaneously far more acceptable) and the teleological basis to his knowledge - idappaccayata. Whilst simplifying this quote and the "Advancement of Learning" into a taxonomy of reason and revelation might well be gross - and in a sense disrespectful, I don't actually think that I am misrepresenting Bacon - I certainly hope not.

We will now consider Bacon's classification of actual and possible human knowledge. The first division is made by reference to the source from which the materials of knowledge flow into the mind. They may come either from the direct action of the Creator on his creatures, or from the action of the created world including ourselves. Thus human knowledge is first dichotomised into that which is acquired supernaturally and that which is acquired naturally. Each of these great divisions is then trichotomised on a psychological principle, viz., with reference to the cognitive faculty which the mind mainly uses in the work of knowing. Bacon recognises three such faculties, viz., Memory (which for the present purpose includes Sense-perception), Imagination, and Reason. Memory and Imagination are concerned with particular things, events, and facts; Reason with general concepts, facts, and laws. Memory deals with real particulars and Imagination with feigned particulars. Thus human knowledge, whether of natural or of supernatural origin, is divided into History, Poesy, and Philosophy (or Science).

Before considering further subdivisions we must explain Bacon's views about supernaturally acquired knowledge; we shall then be able to confine ourselves to the knowledge which originates naturally. According to Bacon there are three subjects which need for their complete treatment data that spring from a supernatural source. These are Theology, Ethics, and Psychology. Each of these sciences can, however, be carried to a certain length without appeal to revelation. Each of them therefore divides into a natural and a revealed part. Theology is the most fundamental of the three, since the parts of Ethics and of Psychology which depend on revelation are branches of Revealed Theology.

Bacon holds that the existence of teleology in Nature is an obvious fact, and that the investigation of final causes is a perfectly legitimate branch of Natural Philosophy. It has, however, been misplaced; for it belongs to the division of Natural Philosophy which Bacon calls Metaphysics and not to that which he calls Physics. Bacon's epigram that "the research into Final Causes, like a virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing" has been taken by careless or biased readers to be a condemnation of such research. It is nothing of the kind. It is simply a statement of the obvious fact that there is no art of Applied Teleology as there is an art of Applied Physics. Now Bacon holds that the existence and some of the attributes of God can be established conclusively by reflexion on the teleology of Nature. But this does not give determinate enough information about God to form an adequate basis for religion. The further details must be supplied by God himself in revelation. God, says Bacon, did not need to work miracles to convince atheists but to convert heathens.

His view about Ethics is very similar. We have a partial and inadequate knowledge of right and wrong by the light of Nature. But it does little more than show us that certain types of action are wrong; it gives no very determinate information about our positive duties. Divine revelation is needed to provide an adequate basis for a detailed morality.

The division of Psychology into a natural and a revealed part follows a different principle. There are not two Gods, one of whom is the subject of Natural and the other of Revealed Theology. But in man there are two souls, the rational and the animal. The former is immaterial, peculiar to man, and directly created by God at the moment of conception. The latter is shared with animals; it is material, and due to one's parents. It is described as "a corporeal substance, attenuated and made invisible by heat," which resides mainly in the head, runs along the nerves, and is refreshed by the arterial blood. It is in fact our old friend "the animal spirits" which are as material as methylated spirits. In man the rational soul uses the animal soul as its immediate instrument. Now the science of the rational soul, its origin, nature, and destiny, must "be drawn from the same divine inspiration from which that substance first proceeded." The science of the animal soul belongs to Natural Philosophy. Bacon's theory of the animal soul owes much to Telesius, while his sharp distinction between it and the rational soul is closely analogous to the theory which Descartes worked out in greater detail a little later.

It remains to consider Bacon's views as to the relations of reason and revelation. It is legitimate to exercise our reason on the data of revelation in two ways. In the first place we may try to understand them. But we have no more ground for expecting God's revealed nature to be agreeable to our reason than for expecting his revealed commands to be agreeable to our wishes. On the whole Bacon thinks that there is a strong presumption that the contents of divine revelation will be repugnant to our reason; and that, the more preposterous God's revealed nature and commands appear to be, the greater is our merit in believing in the former and obeying the latter. The position which Bacon here adopts has been most forcibly stated by Hobbes: "The doctrines of religion are like the pills prescribed by physicians, which if swallowed whole do us good, but if chewed up make us sick." The second legitimate use of reason in matters of revelation is the following. We may take the revealed nature and commands of God as fixed, and to us arbitrary, premises like the rules of chess. We may then use reasoning to deduce remote consequences from them, just as we may use it in solving a chess-problem. Each use of reason has its characteristic dangers. In trying to understand the contents of divine revelation we may distort them by forcing them into the world of the human intellect. And in drawing consequences from revealed truths we may ascribe to the conclusions of our fallible reasoning that certainty which the premises derive from their Divine Author.

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