The Distempers Of Learning
The Distempers Of LearningThe "Distempers" of Learning (as defined by FrancisBacon in his seminal 1605 treatise The Proficience and Advancement of Learning) (Copied from TheInternetEncyclopediaOfPhilosophy? http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bacon.htm)
"There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced." Thus Bacon, in the first book of the Advancement. He goes on to refer to these vanities as the three "distempers" of learning and identifies them (in his characteristically memorable fashion) as "fantastical learning", "contentious learning", and "delicate learning" (alternatively identified as "vain imaginations", "vain altercations", and "vain affectations").
By fantastical learning ("vain imaginations") Bacon had in mind what we would today call pseudo-science: i.e., a collection of ideas that lack any real or substantial foundation, that are professed mainly by occultists and charlatans, that are carefully shielded from outside criticism, and that are offered largely to an audience of credulous true believers. In Bacon's day such "imaginative science" was familiar in the form of astrology, natural magic, and alchemy.
By contentious learning ("vain altercations") Bacon was referring mainly to Aristotelian philosophy and theology and especially to the Scholastic tradition of logical hair-splitting and metaphysical quibbling. But the phrase applies to any intellectual endeavor in which the principal aim is not new knowledge or deeper understanding but endless debate cherished for its own sake.
Delicate learning ("vain affectations") was Bacon's label for the new humanism insofar as (in his view) it seemed concerned not with the actual recovery of ancient texts or the retrieval of past knowledge but merely with the revival of Ciceronian rhetorical embellishments and the reproduction of classical prose style. Such preoccupation with "words more than matter", with "choiceness of phrase" and the "sweet falling of clauses" - in short, with style over substance - seemed to Bacon (a careful stylist in his own right) the most seductive and decadent literary vice of his age.
Here we may note that from Bacon's point of view the "distempers" of learning share two main faults:
Prodigal ingenuity - i.e., each distemper represents a lavish and regrettable waste of talent, as inventive minds that might be employed in more productive pursuits exhaust their energy on trivial or puerile enterprises instead.
Sterile results - i.e., instead of contributing to the discovery of new knowledge (and thus to a practical "advancement of learning" and eventually to a better life for all), the distempers of learning are essentially exercises in personal vainglory that aim at little more than idle theorizing or the preservation of older forms of knowledge.
In short, in Bacon's view the distempers impede genuine intellectual progress by beguiling talented thinkers into fruitless, illusory, or purely self-serving ventures. What is needed - and this is a theme reiterated in all his later writings on learning and human progress - is a program to re-channel that same creative energy into socially useful new discoveries.
Definition of Distemper, for convenience:
I see connections to FallaciousArguments here, but cannot quite describe of what kind these are. Possibly TheDistempersOfLearning, FallaciousArguments and AntiPatterns together fall into some CategoryDistraction???? -- GunnarZarncke
[Meta...]
What does this have to do with the rest of the wiki? CandidateForDeletion?. -- BrentNewhall
The best description of XP I have ever read. -- Chris MacDonald
EditText of this page
(last edited July 3, 2007)
or FindPage with title or text search