1 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in idem, Works (ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Devon Heath), 14 vols., London: Longmans, 1868–1901, vol. 4, Book 1, Aphorism 98, p. 98. Thomas Fowler, in his introduction to Bacon's Novum Organum, 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, p. 147 n. 78, notes, ‘Mr. Spedding … informed me that the translation was originally made by an Undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, but that he was himself responsible for the form which it ultimately assumed.’

2 Unless otherwise indicated, translations refer to Works, op. cit. (1); Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 11, ‘The Instauratio magna, Part II: Novum organum and associated texts (ed. with introduction, notes, commentaries, and facing-page translations by Graham Rees with Maria Wakely), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. For an account of the reception of Bacon's philosophy see Rees, Graham, ‘The reputation of Francis Bacon's philosophy’, Huntington Library Quarterly (2002) 65, pp. 379–394Google Scholar; for a comprehensive list of translations and editions to 1750 see Gibson, R.W., Francis Bacon: A Bibliography of His Works and of Baconiana to the Year 1750, Oxford: Scrivener, 1950Google Scholar.

3 For scholars who have associated Francis Bacon with the torture or torment of nature see Table 6 (italics added to ‘torture’ and its variants). For translators who have interpreted vexare and its variants as ‘torture’ or ‘torment’ see Tables 1–5 and the discussion below. Scholars who have interpreted the meaning of vexare and its variants as ‘annoy’, ‘irritate’, or ‘harass’ (see discussion below) include the following: Soble, Alan, ‘In defense of Bacon’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1995) 25, pp. 192–215Google Scholar, rpt. with additions and corrections in Koertge, Noretta (ed.), A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 195–215Google Scholar; Landau, Iddo, ‘Feminist criticisms of metaphors in Bacon's philosophy of science’, Philosophy (1998) 73, pp. 47–61Google Scholar; and Zagorin, Perez, Francis Bacon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 121–122Google Scholar; Pesic, Peter, ‘Nature on the rack: Leibniz's attitude towards judicial torture and the “torture” of Nature’, Studia Leibnitiana (1997) 29, pp. 189–197Google Scholar; idem, ‘Wrestling with Proteus: Francis Bacon and the “torture of Nature”’, Isis (1999) 90, pp. 81–94 (in this article Pesic identified many of the scholars who interpreted Bacon as implying that nature should be put on the rack); idem, ‘Proteus unbound: Francis Bacon's successors and the defense of experiment’, Studies in Philology (2001) 98, pp. 428–456; idem, ‘Proteus rebound: reconsidering the torture of Nature’, Isis (2008) 98, pp. 304–317; idem, ‘Shapes of Proteus in Renaissance art’, Huntington Library Quarterly (2010) 73, pp. 57–82; Mathews, Nieves, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996Google Scholar; idem, ‘Francis Bacon: slave driver or servant of Nature’, available at http://www.sirbacon.org/mathewsessay.htm (c.1999); Vickers, Brian, ‘Francis Bacon, feminist historiography, and the dominion of Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas (2008) 69, pp. 117–141Google Scholar; Sokal, Alan, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy, and Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008Google Scholar. For responses see Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1980Google Scholar, Chapter 7; idem, ‘The Scientific Revolution and The Death of Nature’, Isis (2006) 97, pp. 513–533; idem, ‘Secrets of Nature: the Baconian debates revisited’, Journal of the History of Ideas (2008) 69, pp. 147–162; idem, ‘“The violence of impediments”: Francis Bacon and the origins of experimentation’, Isis (2008) 99, pp. 731–760.

4 Mary Tiles, following Ian Hacking, has argued that experimental science since Francis Bacon has emphasized the role of intervention in nature through ‘vexation’. Scientists, she writes, have not sufficiently appreciated ‘the respect in which modern science intervenes in nature to further its inquiries – the respect in which it relies on, as well as generates, new forms of human artifice’. See Tiles, Mary, ‘Experiment as intervention’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1993) 44, pp. 463–475, 463Google Scholar; Hacking, Ian, Representing and Intervening, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983Google Scholar.

5 Natale Conti, Mythologiae (1551), tr. and annotated by John Mulryan and Steven Brown, 2 vols., Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006, vol. 2, Chapter 8, ‘On Proteus’, pp. 724–730: ‘since Proteus used to come ashore around noon to have an afternoon nap with the seals, Idothea told Menelaus to grab Proteus while he was sleeping, and then hold on to him as he went through his various changes, until he went back to his original shape’ (p. 725). Conti also included the Latin version of the fourth book of Homer's Odyssey (Loeb translation included by Mulryan and Brown) as follows: ‘First he will count the seals, and go over them; but when he has told them all off by fives, and beheld them, he will lay himself down in their midst, as a shepherd among his flocks of sheep. Now so soon as you see him laid to rest, thereafter let your hearts be filled with strength and courage, and do you hold him there despite his striving and struggling to escape. For try he will, and will assume all manner of shapes of all things that move upon the earth, and of water, and of wondrous blazing fire’ (393–418; Loeb tr.) See also Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio, ‘Marini Dei’, in idem, De Deis Gentium, New York: Garland Publishing, 1976Google Scholar; originally published Basel, 1548, pp. 117–118. Vicenzo Cartari's Images of the Gods (1556) appeared in an abridged English paraphrase by Richard Linche as The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction Wherein is Lively Depictured the Images and Statues of the Gods …, London: Islip, 1599. Rossi, Paolo, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, tr. Sacha Rabinovitch, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968, p. 255Google Scholarn. 20, writes, ‘Conti's Mythologia ran to 19 eds. between 1551 and 1627 … The Imagini by Cartari had 24 eds. between 1556 and 1699 … This will give some idea of the popularity of such works in Europe.’

6 Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI (Loeb Classical Library), with an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G.P. Goold, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 246–249, Book IV, ll. 387–414. Emphasis added. John Briggs (like G.W. Kitchin) has pointed out that Bacon's source for the term ‘fetters’ (vinclis) was actually Virgil, who included the means by which Proteus was constrained. Briggs, John, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Science, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 34–35, 34Google Scholar: ‘Virgil's adaptation of the episode for the Georgics permits Aristaeus to confine Proteus in chains, but not before seizing him in his own arms (manibus vinclisque). His mother stresses the importance of capturing Proteus with chains and strength together (vim duram et vincula capto / Tende)’. Concerning Conti's Mythologiae, Briggs notes (p. 259 n. 30), ‘Jean Baudouin's wordy 1627 translation dilutes but does not erase the intellectual and physical import of [Conti's] verb … A later sentence in Baudouin's paragraph, claiming that Proteus’ feet were then bound, is an interpolation. Neither [Conti] nor Homer makes the capture explicitly violent. In Baudouin's case, the verb garroter strongly suggests mechanical torture’. See also Vickers, op. cit. (3), pp. 18–19. Like Kitchin and Briggs, Vickers notes (pp. 18–19), ‘Although most modern readers know this story from Homer, Bacon used Virgil, who closely imitated the Odyssey's account in Book 4 of the Georgics. Where the oral poet(s) had not specified the means by which Menelaos and his men held Proteus fast, the practical Roman added some realistic details. His enquirer is advised to catch Proteus “in fetters” (396: vinclis capiendus), “For without force he will give you no counsel, nor shall you bend him by prayer. With stern force and fetters make fast the captive (vim duram et vincula capto / tende)” (399–400). Proteus's power to turn himself “into all wondrous shapes” (441) can only be overcome by holding him “in the grasp of hands and fetters” (manibus vinclisque tenebis, 405) until the “seer” (vates) reveals the truth.’ (Virgil, Georgics, ibid.) On Bacon's use of the term ‘bonds and handcuffs’ in the Parasceve see Vickers, p. 19.

7 See Table 1, column 6 (tr. Spedding), italics added. These ‘strange shapes’ may refer to the marvels or monsters that Bacon includes in his second state of nature (i.e. nature ‘in error’). See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 1605, Works, vol. 3, p. 330Google Scholar, ‘Nature erring or varying’, and BaconDe Augmentis (1623), Works, vol. 1, p. 496Google Scholar and Works, vol. 4, p. 294. Others translate Bacon's Latin in the Proteus myth (omnes formas atque rerum miracula and in miras rerum transformationes et effigies) (see Table 1, Latin, column 1) as ‘all kinds of shapes and miraculous forms’ and ‘a strange variety of Shapes and Appearances’ (Table 1, Shaw, column 2); ‘all manner of forms and prodigies’ and ‘a wonderful variety of shapes and transformations’ (Table 1, Merivale, column 3), and ‘all manner of forms and wonders of nature’ and ‘divers strange forms and shapes of things’ (Table 1, Montagu, column 5). For a discussion see Merchant, ‘The Scientific Revolution and The Death of Nature’, op. cit. (3), pp. 741–742.

8 All translations cited here are by Spedding.

9 See Table 4, column 8 (tr. Spedding). Emphasis added.

10 For the use of the term ‘vexation’ in Bacon's contemporary context see the following sources on alchemy: Paracelsus (1493–1541), The Coelum Philosophorum, or Book of Vexations, in The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus the Great … ed. and trans. Arthur Edward Waite, 2 vols., Berkeley: Shambala Books, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 5–20. See also Johann Rudolph Glauber (1604–1670), Commentary on Paracelsus, Heaven of the Philosophers or Book of Vexation, ‘Third Part of the Mineral Work’, in idem, Works, London: T. Milbourn, 1689, pp. 125–147; idem, Opera mineralis (Latin), Amsterdam, 1651–1652. John Dee (1527–1608) also referred to Paracelsus's Book of Vexations of Philosophers (http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy2/dee.htm): ‘The fourth is the manner of making Mineral Amber, of which Paracelsus hath only writ in his Book of Vexations of Philosophers and in the last edition of his work in the sixth book of his Archidoxes; but because they cannot be made without the help of the Elixirs, therefore they deserve a place among the Elixirs, where I shall discover the virtue or rather the vice of making Amber’. Also: ‘Whence Paracelsus, a worthy Master in Magic, seeing fully the nature and the utility of Alchemy, commanding to make the Elixir thereof, when as its natural body cannot anywhere be had, in his Book of the Vexations of Philosophers and the sixth of his Magical Archidoxes, teacheth to compound an Artificial Electrum that the Elixir must be made thereof’. Paracelsus, The Book Concerning the Tincture of the Philosophers …, Transcribed by Mileusnic, Dusan Djordjevic from Paracelsus his Archidoxis: Comprised in Ten Books, Disclosing the Genuine way of making Quintessences, Arcanums, Magisteries, Elixirs, &c. Together with his Books Of Renovation & Restauration, London: J.H. Oxon, 1660Google Scholar, Book IV, final sentences. Ben Jonson (1572–1637), ‘Mercury vindicated from the alchemists at court’, in idem, Works, 11 vols., Oxford: Clarendon, 1954–1965, vol. 7, pp. 407–417; idem, The Alchemist, edited with an introduction and notes by Charles Montgomery Hathaway Jr, Yale Studies in English, Albert S. Cook (ed.), New York: Henry Holt, 1903, see pp. 159–160 and 305 n. 594: ‘Paracelsus has a treatise entitled Coelum Philosophorum or Book of Vexations, Waite's tr. vol. I, p. 1.’ See also Ball, P., ‘Alchemical culture and poetry in early modern England’, Interdisciplinary Reviews (2006) 31, p. 12Google Scholar; and Samuel Thompson, Charles John, Alchemy and Alchemists, Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 2002, p. 199Google Scholar. On Bacon's understanding of alchemy see Rees, Graham, ‘Francis Bacon's semi-Paracelsian cosmology’, Ambix (1975) 12, pp. 81–101, 82, 85Google Scholar. Bacon rejected the Paracelsian principle salt in building a modified, semi-Paracelsian cosmology (pp. 88, 89). Bacon used the term ‘Chymistas’ (Bacon, ‘Temporis Partus Masculus’, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, pp. 533, 534). Lawrence Principe and William Newman have argued that the term ‘chymistry’ avoids a false dichotomy between alchemy and chemistry in early modern science (see Principe, Lawrence M. and Newman, William R., ‘Alchemy vs. chemistry: the etymological origins of a historiographic mistake’, Early Science and Medicine (1998) 3, pp. 32–65Google Scholar). On alchemy as chymistry see also Principe, Lawrence (ed.), Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry, Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2007Google Scholar.

11 On the use of vexation in the context of witchcraft see John Swan, A True and Brief Report, of Mary Glovers Vexation, and of her Deliverance by the Means of Fasting and Prayer, in Michael MacDonald (ed.), Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London: Edward Jorden and the Mary Glover Case, London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1991. James VI of Scotland who became James I of England in 1603 and under whom Bacon rose to power had written the Daemonologie in 1597 (rpt. New York: Dutton, 1924), a work consisting of dialogues between Philomathes and Epistemon, the latter of whom represents the opinions of King James (see note in Bacon, De Dignitate, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 498). James did not use the terms ‘vex’ or ‘vexation’, but did write that the devil could torment people by two kinds of possession, one inwardly, the other outwardly. Daemonologie, Book III, Chapter 2, pp. 62–64.

12 Perhaps the most historically significant use of the word ‘vexation’ in the Bible occurs in the Old Testament, Book of Isaiah. The Catholic version of the Bible, the Vulgate, in which the Latin appears, states the following verse from Isaiah 28:19: Sola vexatio dabit intellectum auditui. English translations are: ‘Only pain shall give understanding.’ Or alternatively, ‘Only tribulation alone will give understanding to the hearing.’ The King James version, published during the time of Francis Bacon, translates the Latin vexatio as ‘vexation’: ‘And it shall be a vexation only to understand the report.’ Alternatively, ‘And it shall be a vexation only when he shall make you to understand doctrine.’ The Latin usage as ‘pain’ and ‘tribulation’ implies that vexation is more than agitation or irritation. The Foxe translation is: ‘Vexation geueth understanding.’ The phrase vexatio dabit intellectum was of major significance in the era of the Inquisition.

13 On the use of vexation by the Inquisition, see Ames, Christine Caldwell, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, p. 165Google Scholar.

14 In his 1623 Latin revision of The Advancement of Learning (De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum), Bacon stated that nature existed in three states – at liberty, in error and in bonds. See De Augmentis, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, Book II, Chapter 2, p. 294: ‘She is either free and follows her own course of development as in the heavens, in the animal and vegetable creation, and in the general array of the universe; or she is driven out of her ordinary course by the perverseness [pravitatibus], insolence [insolentiis], and forwardness of matter [materiae contumacies] and violence of impediments [impedimentorum violentia], as in the case of monsters [monstris]; or lastly she is put in constraint [constringitur], molded [fingitur], and made as it were new by art and the hand of man [arte et opera humana]; as in things artificial.’ Bacon's three states of nature were implicitly reflected in the 1609 Proteus myth. See Table 1, column 6: Here Proteus (matter) ‘unconstrained and at liberty’ or ‘the universe with its several species according to their ordinary frame and structure’ (i.e. nature at liberty); matter which ‘turn[s] and transform[s] itself into strange shapes’ is nature in error; while the ‘force [brought] to bear on matter’ by ‘vex[ing]’ it is nature in bonds.

15 Descartes, ‘The Meditations’ (1641), in idem, Meditations and Selections from the Principles of Philosophy, LaSalle: Open Court, 1952, p. 98; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), in idem, English Works (ed. William Molesworth), 11 vols., rpt. Aalen: Scientia, 1966, vol. 3, p. ix.

16 Cohen, Leonora D., ‘Descartes and Henry More on the beast-machine: a translation of their correspondence pertaining to animal automatism’, Annals of Science (1936) 1, pp. 48–61Google Scholar; Albert G.A. Balz, ‘Cartesian doctrine and the animal soul: an incident in the formation of the modern philosophical tradition’, in Columbia Department of Philosophy (ed.), Studies in the History of Ideas, New York: Columbia University Press, 1935, vol. 3, pp. 117–177; Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667) (ed. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones), St Louis: Washington University Press, 1958, pp. 218–219, 317; Richard Lower, Tractatus de corde (1665); Stimson, Dorothy, Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the Royal Society, New York: Greenwood Press, 1968, pp. 84–86Google Scholar.

17 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Opera Omnia (ed. Ludovici Dutens), Geneva, 1768, vol. 6, p. 70; idem, ‘The monadology’ (1716), in Leroy E. Loemker (ed. and trans.), Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press. See also Pesic, ‘Nature on the rack’, op. cit. (3).

18 On Peter Shaw see Gibbs, F.W., ‘Peter Shaw and the revival of chemistry’, Annals of Science (1951) 7, pp. 211–237Google Scholar; Golinski, Jan, ‘Peter Shaw: chemistry and communication in Augustan England’, Ambix (1983) 30, pp. 19–29Google Scholar, esp. 23–24; Burns, D. Thorburn, ‘Some aspects of the history of education in analytical chemistry: published syllabi and their authors, Shaw (1734), Watson (1771), Moyes (1784, 1786) and Sullivan (1856)’, Fresenius Journal of Analytical Chemistry (1993) 347, pp. 14–18Google Scholar; Golinski, Jan, ‘Shaw, Peter’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar; Sumner, James, ‘Michael Combrune, Peter Shaw and commercial chemistry: the Boerhaavian chemical origins of brewing thermometry’, Ambix (2007) 54, pp. 5–29Google Scholar, 10: ‘Shaw was deeply concerned with the relationship between natural philosophers and practical operators. His chief totem was Francis Bacon, whose philosophical works he translated. Jan Golinski summarises Shaw's interpretation of the Baconian method as follows: the philosopher stands in a position of intellectual dominance over the artisan, handing down to him the rules for the best conduct of his labour; however, the philosopher cannot formulate those rules unless guided by knowledge that only the artisans themselves can provide.’ See also Shaw, Peter, Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry, London: J. Osborn and T. Longman, 1730Google Scholar; idem, Chemical Lectures, Publickly Read at London, In the Years 1731, and 1732, London: T. & T. Longman, 1734, 2nd edn corrected, 1755, pp. 418–419, 438.

19 Gibbs, op. cit. (18), p. 224; Shaw, Chemical Lectures, op. cit. (18), p. 438.

20 Brown, Harcourt, Science and the Human Comedy: Natural Philosophy in French Literature from Rabelais to Maupertuis, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979, pp. 107–125Google Scholar; William Hogarth, The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751), available at http://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/cruel.htm; James Ferguson, Lectures on Select Subjects (1761); Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768).

21 Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England (ed. Basil Montagu), 16 vols., London: William Pickering, 1825–1834; idem, The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England, A New Edition with a Life of the Author by Basil Montagu, 3 vols., Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844; idem, Works (ed. Basil Montagu), 3 vols., Philadelphia: Carey & Hart and Parry & McMillan, 1850–1859.

22 François Bacon, Oeuvres Philosophiques, Morales et Politiques, 15 vols. (ed. J.A.C. Buchon et al., Compiled from translations by Antoine de la Salle (Dijon, 1800)), Paris: Auguste Desrez, 1840; see Buchon's Notice at p. xiv. Thomas Fowler confirms that the translation of the Novum Organum is that of La Salle; see Fowler, op. cit. (1), p. 147. Quotations from Nouvel Organe, p. 302: ‘Il en est de même des mystères de la nature; elle laisse plus aisément échapper son secret lorsqu'elle est tourmentée et comme torturée par l'art, que lorsqu'on l'abandonne à son cours ordinaire, la laissant dans toute sa liberté’ (italics added); Distribution de l'Ouvrage, p. 13: ‘attendu que la nature se décèle mieux par les tourments que l'art lui fait subir que lorsqu'elle est abondonnée à elle-même et laissée dans toute sa liberté’, and in discussing the three states of nature, ‘mais bien plus celle de la nature liée et tourmentée’; De La Dignité et De L'Accroissement des Sciences, p. 58: ‘de même aussi la nature, irritée et tourmentée par l'art’; De La Sagesse Des Anciens, sec. XI, p. 554: ‘Ceux qui voulaient le consulter ne pouvaient tirer aucune réponse de lui qu'en le garrottant très étroitement’ (italics added); ‘mais si un ministre de la nature, éclairé et guidé par le génie, prend pein à lui faires une sorte de violence et à la tourmenter des toutes les manières’ and ‘elle semble revenir à son premier état si l'on continue à lui faire violence’; ‘c'est de lui mettre pour ainsi dire des menottes, c'est-à-dire d'employer les moyens extrêmes’ (italics added). A 1997 French translation of La Sagesse des Anciens by Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Paris: J. Vrin, 1997, also used the terms tourmente and violence in the section on Proteus, see p. 101: ‘Mais si quelque Ministre éprouvé de la Nature use de violence avec la matière, la tourmente et la presse comme si son intention et son but était de la ramener au néant, alors celle-ci (qui ne peut être annihilée or véritablement détruite, sinon par l'omnipotence divine), placée dans une telle extrémité, prend les formes et les apparences des choses le plus étranges, passe de l'une à l'autre comme en cercle, achève le cycle et revient en quelque sorte à elle-même, si la violence persiste.’

23 On Creighton's career see Anonymous, ‘James E. Creighton dies’, Cornell Alumni News (16 October 1924) 27, p. 46.

24 Francis Bacon, The Novum Organum, or A True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature (ed. G.W. Kitchin), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1855, Book I, aphorism 98, p. 81: ‘similarly the hidden things of Nature more betray themselves when the Arts provoke them, than when they wander on in their own course’. Francis Lord Verulam, Novum Organum or True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature (newly translated by the Rev. Andrew Johnson, M.A.), London: Bell & Daldy, 1959, pp. 94–95: ‘so the secrets of Nature reveal themselves better under the vexations of the Arts than when they wander on in their own course’.

25 Rees, Graham, ‘The reputation of Francis Bacon's philosophy’, Huntington Library Quarterly (2002) 65, pp. 379–394Google Scholar, 386–387 and n. 30. The two twentieth-century translations to which Rees referred were (1) Francis Bacon, Novum Organum and Other Parts of the Great Instauration (tr. Peter Urbach and John Gibson), Chicago: Open Court, 1994, see ‘The Plan of the Work’, p. 25: ‘but much more of Nature constrained and vexed; by which I mean when, by art and intervention of man she is forced out of her natural state and is pressed and moulded’, and Novum Organum, Book I, aphorism 98, p. 108: ‘And just as in ordinary life, the true personality of a person and his hidden thoughts and motives show themselves more clearly when he is under stress than at other times, so things in nature that are hidden reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they follow their own course.’ See also ‘Preparation Towards a Natural and Experimental History’, p. 306: ‘In short the vexations of art much resemble the bonds and manacle of Proteus which betray the ultimate struggles and efforts of matter.’ (2) Francis Bacon, The New Organon (tr. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, see ‘Plan of the Work’, p. 21: ‘Nature reveals herself more through the harassment of art than in her own proper freedom.’ See also New Organon, Book I, aphorism 98, p. 81: ‘For just as in politics each man's character and the hidden set of his mind and passions is brought out when he is in a troubled state than at other times, in the same way also the secrets of nature reveal themselves better through harassments applied by the arts than when they go on in their own way.’ See also ‘Outline of a Natural and Experimental History’, p. 227: ‘And the manipulations of art are like the bonds and shackles of Proteus, which reveal the ultimate strivings and struggles of matter.’

26 Bentham, Jeremy, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 2nd edn, 2 vols., London: W. Pickering and R. Wilson, 1823Google Scholar, vol. 2, Chapter 17, note.

27 Rees, op. cit. (25), pp. 382, 379, quoting MacLaurin, Colin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, London, 1748, p. 7Google Scholar.

28 Horkheimer, Max, The Eclipse of Reason, New York: Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 49Google Scholar. Horkheimer cites Bacon's Latin from De Augmentis Scientiarum, lib. II, cap. II, in The Works of Francis Bacon (ed. Basil Montagu), London, 1827, vol. 8, p. 96. ‘“For like as a man's disposition is never well known till he be crossed, nor Proteus ever changed shapes till he was straightened and held fast, so the passages and variations of nature cannot appear so fully in the liberty of nature as in the trials and vexations of art.” Works of Francis Bacon, new edition, vol. 1, London, 1826, p. 78’.

29 Keller, Evelyn Fox, Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, Chapter 2, pp. 33–42, 35Google Scholar; see also 34: ‘What was Bacon's vision? It was without a doubt of a science leading to the sovereignty, dominion, and mastery of man over nature’. Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986Google Scholar, see pp. 113–116 on rape and torture metaphors in Francis Bacon's thought, esp. p. 116: ‘Bacon uses bold sexual imagery to explain key features of the experimental method as the inquisition of nature … [T]his is Bacon's way of explaining the necessity of aggressive and controlled experiments in order to make the results of research replicable! … The severe testing of hypotheses through controlled manipulations of nature, and the necessity of such controlled experiments if such manipulations are to be repeatable is here formulated by the father of scientific method in clearly sexist metaphors. Both nature and inquiry appear conceptualized in terms of rape and torture – on men's most violent and misogynist relationships to women – and this modeling is advanced as a reason to value science’.

30 Hadot, Veil of Isis, quotation on p. 317.

31 See note 25 above and Table 2, columns 9 and 10.

32 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3); idem, ‘Proteus rebound’, op. cit. (3). Pesic used the translations of Spedding Ellis and Heath and of Graham Rees in his defense of Bacon.

33 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), quotations on pp. 84 and 85.

34 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), p. 88.

35 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), p. 89 nn. 16 and 17.

36 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), p. 81, abstract.

37 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), pp. 90, 93.

38 Pesic, ‘Wrestling with Proteus’, op. cit. (3), pp. 90, 94.

39 Pesic, ‘Shapes of Proteus’, op. cit. (3), pp. 66, 70 and 71. Four images (Figures 6, 1555, p. 69; 7, 1575, pp. 72–73; 8, before 1638, p. 76; and 9, 1663, p. 77) depict Proteus in bonds. On Proteus and the dance see Pesic's section on ‘Dancing with Proteus’, pp. 66 ff., esp. 70–71: ‘The two main figures are seen wrestling in so stylized a fashion that they seem to dance together. The balletic quality of their pose recalls also Lucian's Dialogue on the Dance, cited by a number of Renaissance mythographers. There, Lucian speculates that Proteus was really a master dancer whose many shapes were the various characters he could portray.’ On ‘divine wrestling’ see p. 81: ‘The images that come after Bacon draw increasing attention to the beauty transfiguring the victorious seeker, both a condition and a consequence of his divine wrestling in which the seeker feels himself tested, called to respond’. ‘The images of Proteus’, states Pesic, ‘seem also to show a growing willingness to subject the Old Man of the Sea (and the matter he represents) to ever greater duress. Even so, this scene does not merit the term “torture” in any of the versions we have discussed’ (p. 80). Moreover, the term ‘violence’, according to Pesic, ‘should … be understood against its Aristotelian context, in which it denotes “unnatural” motion that does not “violate” nature as I [Pesic] will discuss in my forthcoming essay “Bacon, Violence, and Experiment”’ (p. 80 n. 42).

40 Sokal, op. cit. (3), pp. 116–118, 118 and 119, original emphasis.

41 Sokal, op. cit. (3), pp. 119–122, 126–129, 119. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, op. cit. (3) (see Table 6); Harding, op. cit. (29); Keller, op. cit. (29). Note: Merchant did not argue that science or the scientific method were masculine.

42 Sokal, op. cit. (3), pp. 119–120, 126.

43 Soble, op. cit. (3), p. 205.

44 Landau, op. cit. (3), pp. 8–9.

45 Vickers, op. cit. (3), p. 132. On p. 134, Vickers also cites Spedding's translation of the passage in the Parasceve (see Table 5, column 4): ‘Finally, the vexations of art are certainly as the bonds and handcuffs (tanquam vincula et manicae) of Proteus, which [display] the ultimate struggles and efforts of matter’, changing Spedding's ‘betray’ to ‘display’, but does not discuss Shaw's or Montagu's translations of the same passage (Table 5, columns 2 and 3). On p. 135 he cites the passage on Proteus from The Wisdom of the Ancients (see Table 1), citing only Spedding's translations and ignoring those of Shaw and Merivale. He also dismisses the long history of association of nature with the female gender as an artefact of language: feminist ‘accusations started from the fact that Bacon referred to Nature as “she.” But he could hardly have done otherwise, since in Latin natura is a feminine noun, a gender it retains in modern European languages, both Romance and Germanic. However, as every language student knows, there is no necessary correlation between grammatical gender and sex, and the feminist appropriation of “Nature” does injustice to men, who are equally capable of nurturing crops and animals, albeit (until recently) excluded from the care of children’ (p. 122).

46 Although Vickers did not cite Wats with respect to his association of ‘vex’ with ‘straitening’ or with Proteus ‘held fast with cordes’, he did cite Wats in relation to Bacon's use of the word ‘hound’ (‘for it is no more but by following and as it were hounding Nature in her wanderings to be able to lead her afterwards to the same place again’: Bacon, Advancement of Learning’, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, p. 330. Despite the fact that Bacon himself used the term ‘hound’ in his 1605 Advancement of Learning, and Spedding used the word ‘hound’ in translating the same passage in the 1623 De Augmentis (Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 294), Vickers claimed that Bacon did not really mean ‘hound’ because Wats in 1640 translated it as ‘footings’ (Wats, Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning, Oxford, 1640, p. 81). Vickers quotes Bacon's Latin, ut naturae vestigia persequaeris sagaciter, cum ipsa sponte aberret … deducere et compellere possis (Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 498), and argues that because vestigium means ‘footprints, foot-track, and track’ and sagaciter means ‘Quickly, sharply, keenly, with quickness of scent, with a fine sense of smell’, the meaning carries ‘no implications of violence’. But Vickers ignores the intervening word persequaeris (persequor), which when combined with vestigia means ‘to follow with hostile intent’, ‘to hunt out’ and ‘to overtake’, as well as ‘to pursue hostilely, proceed against, punish, avenge’. Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1959, p. 441. See Vickers, op. cit. (3), p. 128.

47 Mathews, ‘Francis Bacon: slave driver or servant of Nature’, op. cit. (3), pp. 1–2, 3.

48 Mathews, ‘Francis Bacon: slave driver or servant of Nature’, op. cit. (3), p. 3.

49 Mathews, ‘Francis Bacon: slave driver or servant of Nature’, op. cit. (3), p. 3.

50 Frederick Amrine, ‘The unconscious of Nature: analyzing disenchantment in Faust I’, in Daniel Purdy (ed.), Goethe-Yearbook 17, Rochester: Camden House, 2010, pp. 117–132. Amrine writes (p. 121), ‘After this direct and unmistakable reference to James's avid prosecution of witches, Bacon continues immediately: “Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his sole object – as you[r] Majesty has shown in your own example.” Why might one “make a scruple”, except if Bacon means by “entering and penetrating” the “holes and corners” exactly what we suspect he must mean by this cryptic allusion: the violation of women's private parts by violent forensic examination. James's Newes from Scotland had proudly reported just that: witches bodies had been inspected by male inquisitors, who shaved all their body hair, including the privates, looking for a secret mark (any mole or birthmark or welt would do) signifying that the Devil had copulated with the witch and branded her as his own … [I]t is always preferable to avoid the bother of arguing in court by procuring a confession. So the witches were tortured – “thrawn [twisted] with a rope” – until they admitted to having done everything of which they had been accused.’ Note: The tract Newes from Scotland, although it discusses James VI's (James I) encounter with witches, was not written by James VI, but has been attributed to James Carmichael (1542 or 1543–1628), minister of Haddington. See Scott, George, The Memoires of Sir James Melville, London, 1683, pp. 194–195Google Scholar, and Webster, David, A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts on Witchcraft …, Edinburgh: D. Webster, 1820, p. 38Google Scholar.

51 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 121, quoting from Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605), in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, p. 333. See also Merchant, ‘The Scientific Revolution and The Death of Nature’, op. cit. (3), pp. 518–526, esp. 522–523.

52 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 121, quotation from Bacon, ‘Cogitationes De Natura Rerum’, in Translations of the Philosophical Works, Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 5, p. 427: ‘… when men consider the inexorable necessity there is in the nature of matter to sustain itself, and not to turn or dissolve into nothing, they should omit no way of vexing and working it, if they would detect and bring out its ultimate operations and powers of resistance.’

53 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 121, quotation from Bacon, ‘Cogitationes De Natura Rerum’, in Translations of the Philosophical Works, Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 5, p. 428: ‘Now there are two kinds of separation: a part of the matter either escapes, as in decoction, or at least withdraws itself, as in cream. The intention therefore of a profound and radical change of bodies is no other than this, that matter be by all proper methods vexed, and yet both these separations in the meantime prevented. For then only does matter suffer real constraint, when every way of escape is cut off.’

54 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 121, from Bacon, ‘XIII, Proteus, or Matter’, in ‘Wisdom of the Ancients’, Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 6, p. 725: ‘And if any one wanted his help in any matter, the only way was first to secure his hands with handcuffs, and then to bind him with chains. Whereupon he on his part, in order to get free, would turn himself into all manner of strange shapes – fire, water, wild beasts, &c., till at last he returned again to his original shape’.

55 Amrine, op. cit. (50), 121–122. Quotations from Bacon, Advancement of Learning, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, p. 333; idem, Novum Organum, in Works, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 95.

56 Amrine, op. cit. (50), 121–122.

57 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 125.

58 Amrine, op. cit. (50), p. 125, italics added.