ABSTRACT
Bacon grasps very early on, in the writings that precede the 1605 Advancement of Learning, that the fundamental instrument of his new science, namely, the combined human power of material observation and intellectual conception, is an obstacle as well. In the Franciscan mystical tradition the word comes to mean "standing outside of" normal human means of cognition, and is thus defined as the opposite, or even negation, of human concepts and languages. In one direction, if intuitive cognition is the privileged access to the truth of the material world, then Bacon finds himself necessarily concerned with the ethical matter of bracketing and eliding the personal fantasies and emotions of the self that would inhibit that access. Bacon's treatment of scientific experimentation as a matter of ethical askesis, i.e., programmatic self-discipline, however, is not something he inherited explicitly from Ockhamist nominalism.
