Francis Bacon and Denis Diderot: Philosophers of Science (review)

Book Reviews Franciz Bacon and Denis Diderot: Philosophers o] Science. By Lilo K. Luxembourg. (New York: Humanities Press, 1967.Pp. 127.$6) This volume stems from Lilo K. Luxembourg's doctoral dissertation at Columbia in 1965. In it she proposes to determine to what extent Diderot, a leading philosophe of the French Enlightenment, was receptive to the ideas of Francis Bacon, an intellectual giant of the English Renaissance, and to establish a position on the Bacon-Diderot relationship. The two men are examined as philosophers of science; Diderot emerges as an admiring, but not always uncritical, disciple of the English Chancellor and a strong proponent of Baconian thought and principles. Dr. Luxembourg begins with the general influence of English thought on France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and reviews the specific impact of Baconian doctrines on the French. Then she traces Diderot's own interest in English and Baconian thought. Bacon and Diderot evolve as humanists with strong interests in common: Both men were convinced that knowledge is power and that the best way of improving man's lot is to gain knowledge of the natural universe. They both were discontented with the status of the sciences in their respective times. Both were well aware that the improvement of the sciences could not be the work of one man and that not much could be accomplished in one lifespan. So they looked to future generations when many men would work together. Dr. Luxembourg compares the methods and procedures of Bacon and Diderot together with their concepts and interpretations of nature; she examines divergent views as well as many remarkable similarities. She argues convincingly from an impressive array of evidence , including contemporary eighteenth-century testimony and Diderot's own correspondence , to support her conclusion that Baconian concepts and principles strongly influenced the thought and works of the French philosophe. And she ably refutes Herbert Dieckman's accusation that Diderot probably contented himself with a rather cursory reading of Bacon. I noted a few errors in the bibliography. For example, Hugh G. Dick has become "Dirk" (p. 113); A. Chambers Bunten is listed as "Chambers, Buntler A." (p. 114); and R. W. Gibson's bibliography of Francis Bacon is dated 1880instead of 1950 (p. 118). Humanities Press has produced an attractive book with portraits of Bacon, Diderot, Newton, and Locke. ELIZABETH S. WaloImY Francie Bacon'Library Claremon4 California The Royal Society: Concept and Creation. By Margery Purver. Intro. H. R. Trevor-Roper. (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1967.Pp. xiv + 246. $7) Spiced with lively scientific and philosophic imagination, Margery Purver's book comes off as a provocative, if not definitive, history of the Royal Society. She has spared no pains in going to source material, and she writes in an authoritative manner, calculated not merely to establish her thesis but also to delight the reader with a sense of the historical ferment from which the Society arose. In short, her scholarship is thorough, and her spirit is contagious . The result is an authentication of the beginnings of the Society, a felicitous presentation of its philosophic background, and an identification of the misinterpretations that have obscured the character of the Society. The authentication of the Society's beginnings is deftly accomplished by reinstating Thomas Sprat's history, published in 1667, in place of the commonly accepted version by [289] ...