As contribuições de Bacon para um raciocínio crítico da relação homem-natureza através da ciência

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, the relationship between human beings and nature is an agenda that has gained constant prominence, it is increasingly evident the need to develop new techniques for the use of natural resources with a greater emphasis on an ethical view of the environment. Observing how the human-nature relationship took place throughout history, in addition to allowing us to reflect on the genesis of science and its initial goals, makes us question whether modern scientific evolution resulted in the social ideals that modern thinkers imagined. One of the first philosophers to conceive the idea of the domination of nature by man through science was the Englishman Francis Bacon, in his most famous work Novum Organum (1620) he clearly writes: “Science and the power of man coincide, since, being the cause is ignored, the effect is frustrated, because nature is not defeated, except when it is obeyed” (BACON, 1979, p. 13). However, looking at the natural disasters of the last decades, we see that the power of science and its creations has been colliding with the limits supported by the natural world. Thus, in the light of Bacon, we can ask ourselves: what is the limit of science and its action in relation to the environment? In his works Bacon always brings ethics to the process of knowledge, technical-scientific production and interpretation of nature, thus analyzing specifically the works The Progress of Knowledge (1605), The Wisdom of the Ancients (1609), Novum Organum (1620) and New Atlantis (1627) I intend to address Bacon's contributions to a critical reasoning of the man-nature relationship through science.