Bacon’s distinction between the spheres of science and those of ethics, religion, and morality takes on a very religious tone. Unlike Nietzsche’s blatant disregard for religion, Bacon acknowledges the significance of religion and cautiously warns against turning away from God and creating one’s own laws.[1] Though knowledge of moral dilemmas such as that between good and evil are God’s alone, Bacon recognizes the importance of cultivating human knowledge in order to improve the human condition and life and conduct charity.[2] The divide, for Bacon, is a divide between the knowledge that humans can obtain through the scientific method and that which humans can obtain through religion.

Although at some point the goal of science may have been to pave the path toward art and nature and God, according to Weber, this is no longer the case.[3] Science cannot, by its very nature, lead us to God.[4] Science cannot give us the answers to the moral questions and those questions concerning the meaning of life. Weber states quite explicitly that the spheres of science and the spheres of “the holy” are unbridgeable, and that such spheres, or gods, will be in constant battle with one another.[5] Weber writes that humans can tackle the scientific questions that demand to be answered in our physical, present world, but that the questions of true value, that seek to explain the human condition and life, cannot be answered through the scientific method. Science inherently does not take on normative inquiry. Though science can do some things, such as offer power, methods, and clarity, it cannot do all things and therefore is limited in its scope.

Both Bacon and Weber believe that knowledge is attainable in some form, though they acknowledge that not all knowledge can be attained through science alone, and that some simply belongs to God. Thus, they accept some moral facts and religious claims as true and objective and beyond human manipulation. In this respect, the divide offers the ability to pursue research using scientific methods from the standpoint of normative claims which themselves do not require scientific proof. Thus, we are able to situate our projects within specific moral spheres. The divide is also useful in that we are not required to recreate the world according to our own desires and morals as Nietzsche may desire. In my own project, I take on many normative assumptions such as the value of protecting minority rights, the importance of democratic societies, and the need to have positive societal behaviors among groups. Without the divide, such as in a Nietzschian world, such assumptions would have to be verified and created on my own accord.

[1] Francis Bacon, “The Great Renewal,” in The New Organon, n.d, 12.

[2] Ibid., 13.

[3] Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, n.d, 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 11.