Arthur F. Holmes does great work describing the changes in understanding education from classical humanism to modern science in his chapter “Francis Bacon: Modern Science and the Uses of Knowledge” in Building the Christian Academy.

So did Bacon succeed in uniting contemplation and action more closely than before? He connects them by making the creation mandate and the relief of human need the means by which learning should glorify God. The connection is not intrinsic to the sciences involved, but extrinsic; not an internal relationship that flows from their very nature but something external to them, an overall “add on” intended by God. It is a kind of “value-added” intended by God. It is a kind of “value-added” education, in which the value of learning is in science’s “practical” applications, not primarily in wisdom for its own sake, nor in transmitting a heritage of values that help shape character, nor in tracing the unity of truth and developing a world and life view. The focus in on what you can do with education in tangible, visible, this-life ways. It is not so much the liberal arts as the new mechanical arts, what we now know as technology and applied science, that are important for that is where power is most evident. Bacon, of course, did not intend the wholly utilitarian approach to education that the Industrial Revolution introduced, but intended to combine the new science with an improved humanistic education, thereby wedding wisdom to scientific discovery.

I’ve not read the Novum Organum yet, but if Holmes is right, it’s easy to see how Bacon’s view led to utilitarianism, which like pragmatism, is fine except that it doesn’t work. Contrast this “extrinisic” view of wisdom to that of the book of Proverbs where wisdom is as practical as avoiding cash advances and rotating your tires. Wisdom is not esoteric information, but broad enough to include skill and craftmanship. Bezalel was an artist filled with wisdom.

I also find this development interesting in application to church culture. Churches that live and die, or that think they live and die, by technology are tempted to think that “power” is revealed and harnessed in the embrace and employment of technology, a mistake which swaps the engine for the paint and leaves the most important things neglected. Opposite, the Luddites are usually suspicious of science and technology, and like the Scholastics left with their inane and self-consuming debates, end up a dying breed. Wedding wisdom to scientific disovery can only be done by seeing the agreement of faithfulness and ingenuity in education and indeed in all work. Creativity and discovery are Reformational fruits driven by sovereign grace.