Bacon’s arguments against the printing press were not based on religious or political opposition, but on epistemological and ethical concerns about the quality, quantity, and authority of printed knowledge. Bacon discussed the printing press in his seminal work, The Advancement of Learning (1605), where he identified three inventions that had changed the world: gunpowder, the
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Bacon’s arguments against the printing press were not based on religious or political opposition, but on epistemological and ethical concerns about the quality, quantity, and authority of printed knowledge. Bacon discussed the printing press in his seminal work, The Advancement of Learning (1605), where he identified three inventions that had changed the world: gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press. He acknowledged that these inventions had enabled the expansion of human power, discovery, and communication, but he also warned that they had also introduced new dangers, errors, and corruptions.
He wrote: “But these three [inventions], perhaps, have fallen out by a certain fatality or providence of such a kind, that though they have added much to human power, they have not much increased human goodness; nay, rather, the first and last have furnished men with the means of doing more mischief, and the please say more second has made them more vain and arrogant.” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter I, section 5)
Bacon’s critique of the printing press focused on four main points:
– First, he argued that the printing press had flooded the world with too many books, especially of ancient and scholastic learning, that were either obsolete, irrelevant, or misleading for the pursuit of true knowledge. He compared the proliferation of books to the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel, and lamented that “the multiplication of books is a burden of the world” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter VIII, section 2).
– Second, he argued that the printing press had encouraged the idolatry of books and authors, as people tended to accept the authority of printed texts without examining their merits, sources, or methods. He accused the printing press of “making the world lazy with books” and of “putting a kind of reverence and religion into letters” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter VIII, sections 3 and 4).
– Third, he argued that the printing press had hindered the advancement of learning by promoting the imitation and repetition of old opinions, rather than the invention and experimentation of new ones. He claimed that “printing has made the world more set and less inventive” and that “men have come to be as it were a kind of fungous generation, not generating from within by the force and virtue of the mind, but growing upon one another and propagating from without by the way of tradition and authority” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter VIII, sections 5 and 6).
– Fourth, he argued that the printing press had fostered the dissemination of false, frivolous, or harmful knowledge, such as superstitions, fables, libels, and scandals, that corrupted the minds and morals of the readers. He cautioned that “printing has been guilty of much wrong; for by it many false and vicious things have been propagated in the world” and that “it is a thing more subject to the humours and passions of men than perhaps any other” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter VIII, sections 7 and 8).
Bacon’s arguments against the printing press were not meant to condemn the invention altogether, but to call for a reform and regulation of its use and abuse. He proposed that the printing press should be subjected to the guidance and judgment of learned and wise men, who could select, edit, and publish the most useful and reliable books for the benefit of the public. He also suggested that the printing press should be employed to produce new kinds of books, such as natural histories, experiments, observations, and inventions, that would advance the empirical and inductive method of science that he advocated.
He wrote: “Lastly, we must use the help of printing rightly, and not suffer it to do us harm. And that is, by taking care that those things which are most solid and true, and of most weight and worth for the instruction of life and the increase of power, be printed in the best manner, and in the most correct editions; and that the rest either not be printed at all, or be printed more sparingly and more meanly. And also by devising such editions and impressions of books as may best suit with the nature and dignity of the matter contained in them; as for example, that histories and natural philosophy be printed with the original letters or pictures of things, and experiments, and observations, and the like; and that arts mechanical be printed with the moulds, and patterns, and stamps of their works and processes; and so of the rest, according to the variety of the subjects.” (Bacon, 1605, Book I, Chapter VIII, section 9)
Bacon’s critique of the printing press was influential and controversial in his own time and beyond, as it challenged the prevailing views and values of the humanist and scholastic traditions of learning, and proposed a new vision and method of knowledge production and dissemination.
That was then, this is now!
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