Editing Baconian method (section)

== Frankfurt School critique of Baconian method ==
{{Original research section|date=May 2024}}
[[Max Horkheimer]] and [[Theodor Adorno]] observe that Bacon shuns "knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction" in favor of effective procedures.<ref>"Even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation."<br>''Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature''</ref> While the Baconian method disparages idols of the mind, its requirement for effective procedures compels it to adopt a credulous, submissive stance toward worldly power. 
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:: Power confronts the individual as the universal, as the reason which informs reality.<ref>Die Herrschaft tritt dem Einzelnen als das Allgemeine gegenüber, als die Vernunft in der Wirklichkeit. [[Max Horkheimer]] and [[Theodor W. Adorno]], ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment]]'' (1947), p. 16</ref>{{irrelevant citation|date=October 2020}}
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::Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters.<ref>Das Wissen, das Macht ist, kennt keine Schranken, weder in der Versklavung der Kreatur noch in der Willfähigkeit gegen die Herren der Welt. ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment|ibid]]'', p. 2</ref>
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Horkheimer and Adorno offer a plea to recover the virtues of the "metaphysical apologia", which is able to reveal the injustice of effective procedures rather than merely employing them.

::The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.<ref>Die metaphysische Apologie verriet die Ungerechtigkeit des Bestehenden wenigstens durch die Inkongruenz von Begriff und Wirklichkeit. In der Unparteilichkeit der wissenschaftlichen Sprache hat das Ohnmächtige vollends die Kraft verloren, sich Ausdruck zu verschaffen, und bloß das Bestehende findet ihr neutrales Zeichen. Solche Neutralität ist metaphysischer als die Metaphysik. ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment|ibid]]'', p. 17</ref>