as we see in Figure 10.1; Bacon’s rival Raleigh in particular was close to the
avant-garde poets and was a successful poet himself. And it was back through
this network, in the early 1580s, that Bruno made contact with Sidney and his
circle while propagating his astral magic at London and Oxford. Bacon too
was first inducted into intellectual life through the Sidney circle around the
political patronage of the earl of Leicester (Martin, 1992: 24–38). Bacon’s
creative energy was set off by the literary scene; his first and greatest fame
came with his Essays in 1597, and he expanded them throughout his career,
though incorporating in them hardly a mention of his scientific project.
Bacon personifies the situation at the court, pursuing opportunities in
literature, science, politics, switching courses as the occasion arises. His dis-
tinctive impact derives from the blends he makes of these elements. His literary
prose has the rich pungency of poetry and the aphoristic bite of a political
realist. He writes on a unified empire of knowledge like a consummate courtier
offering intellectual conquests to the throne; he visualizes a centralized direc-
tory of research as if patenting a government monopoly to be delegated to
himself. His intellectual ambition knows no bounds; he expects that his Tables
of Difference will produce the axioms not only of nature but also of politics
and ethics, of logic and mind. Rising above the special sciences, he visualizes
a Philosophia Prima of principles holding good across fields as diverse as
physics and morals (New Organon 127.371; De Dignitate 412–414). After
many machinations, his political career peaked with the chancellorship, then
quickly and inevitably fell. His empire of knowledge too remained more
grandiose than can be realized. But Bacon’s ideology, like his prose style, makes
one of the great conquests in the realm of intellectual reputation, attaching his
name to the structural transformation of his age.
Descartes is a structural parallel to Bacon in a number of respects. Both
acquired first-rate reputations in disparate fields, Bacon in philosophy and
literature, Descartes in philosophy, mathematics, and for about a century in
science; he too established the criterion of style in his vernacular language, the
famous “Cartesian clarity” of French prose. Multiple participation across
intellectual fields is not unusual throughout world history, but multiple lead-
ership of this sort is very rare; where networks overlap, it is usually because
the stars in one are minor contributors to the other. Here is a another sign that
intellectual networks were realigning on a large scale. The setting of a vernacu-
lar prose style as well implies a crucial moment of transition in the means of
intellectual production.^33
The content of Descartes’s thought varies as his network position differs
from Bacon’s. He was much less of a politician (although he received patronage
from Richelieu), and less surrounded by glamorous literary circles. He was also
much more closely connected with current religious movements; he was both
566 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Western Paths