End of Part 52
"For the curse did not make creation entirely and forever rebellious; but in virtue of that ordinance 'in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread,' by every kind of effort . . . it will at length in some measure be subdued so as to provide man with his bread, that is, the necessities of human life."
Professor Affeldt suggested Bacon's intentions for regaining the power of dominion over nature as a kind of Babel Tower approach. I have two thoughts on this:
In the above quote, Bacon is not hoping to overthrow the curse of the Fall. His thought is something like this: "We are supposed to have bread by the sweat of our brow, but we don't even have that! We must sweat in natural philosophy so as to feed ourselves! The curse did not say that we would starve!"
We, on the other hand, have taken his method (or the foundation it laid) and divorced it from necessity. None of us are fed by the sweat of our brow; we rely on technology and the surpluses it allows, as well as the "free market" and the distribution of labor it generates, so that we can go to school, watch movies, eat tomatoes in January, and so on. Also, we do not believe that women should be ruled by their "husbands," which is part of the curse. Is this actually the dominion Bacon had in mind, to overthrow the curse? Or did he only intend to make use of human efforts in a more effective way?
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