How Bacon Became Baconian

Abstract

Francis Bacon’s metaphysics of material desires represents a major contribution to early-modern natural philosophy and theories of matter. By material desires, Bacon meant a limited set of primordial appetites deemed to govern all natural phenomena. He was convinced that through experimental trials natural philosophers could identify such basic appetites, classify them by means of increasingly comprehensive interpretative frameworks (inductions) and control them through direct manipulations (superinductions). Because of its focus on appetites—appetites within matter, but also appetites in men—Bacon’s program of inventio, inductio and superinductio of material desires can be described as an original model of natural-political inquiry.