ABSTRACT
According to Wilson, the first Enlightenment stumble occurred a full century after the "grand architect's" proposal for the great instauration of human knowledge. For the most part, Bacon's Enlightenment progeny tried to demonstrate the impossibility of miracles by the materialistic metaphysics and evidence of natural science. The Enlightenment first "stumbled" when it failed to resolve the conflict between reason and revelation, and this slip was followed by the related failure to "colonize ethics". The unity of knowledge which Bacon proclaimed was in fact cleft by the unbridgeable chasm of religion and morality, and natural science-with its reductionism and immutable laws-was thus indictable as a threat to human freedom and dignity. Bacon often argues that mixing religion and philosophy was the great error of the ancients. To the extent that the basic fissure in the intellectual globe is the one between religion and reason, we could say that Bacon concluded both for and against the unity of knowledge.
