Physics and Metaphysics

Blumenberg says that Bacon drew a distinction between metaphysics and physics in terms of human control: “The former has as its object the unalterable law beyond man’s influence; the latter comprises all knowledge of the operative and material causes that man can transpose in order to influence given states of affairs.” He cites Novum Organon 2.9 in support.

What Bacon actually says there, however, is quite different:

“let the investigation of forms, which are (in the eye of reason at least, and in their essential law) eternal and immutable, constitute Metaphysics; and let the investigation of the efficient cause, and of matter, and of the latent process, and the latent configuration (all of which have reference to the common and ordinary course of nature, not to her eternal and fundamental laws) constitute Physics. And to these let there be subordinate two practical divisions: to Physics, Mechanics; to Metaphysics, what (in a purer sense of the word) I call Magic, on account of the broadness of the ways it moves in, and its greater command over nature.”

Both physics and metaphysics, in short, have their practical subjects – mechanics and magic respectively. The practical science of magic allows “greater command over nature” rather than less. Is this an instance of Blumenberg not taking the religious/magic dimensions of Bacon’s thought seriously?

Perhaps, but Blumenberg does not entirely discount the magical in Bacon: He claims in a footnote that Bacon’s ideal of human knowledge and control is the Adamic control of creation through the word. In the fallen state, man is incapable of this kind of verbal control, and has to pursue knowledge through violent and laborious means.