Francis Bacon on Climategate

The recent scandal at the University of East Anglia that blew the lid off of what many thought was the dispassionate objectivity of the science supporting global warming hysteria would come as no surprise to Francis Bacon, arguably the father of what we now call modern science. In the New Organon, his 1620 argument for a new kind of science based on the severe discipline of a patient and rigorous method, he warned against the unreliability of the human mind in investigating nature:

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called “sciences as one would.” For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem to be occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding (Book I, aphorism 49).

Read my slightly larger reflection on this controversy at WORLDmag.com in "Political Climate Science."