René Descartes and Francis Bacon

Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon both had very controversial ideas for the time periods that they lived in. Rene Descartes was the first to publish his thoughts on geometry. His findings were the jumping off point for our modern day analytical geometry. He was the first to suggest that the world could be defined in scientific terms like matter and motion rather than the world being divinely driven. He published several important writings about his findings. He studied the world through mathematics and science rather than seeing it through the church’s lens of divinity and god. This would be very, very controversial in that time because it would hugely undermine the power of the church. If God is no longer the supreme ruler of everything, he obviously matters much less which means the church matters much less. Not only that, but the very center of people’s belief systems would be questioned which would create unrest in any community and thus make them much harder to control. Following the church was seen as the path to heaven, and if people didn’t follow it and did penance then the church would lose a lot of power over each person’s life. If God does not influence daily events or care about people’s sins then the church becomes irrelevant because people would no longer need them.

Francis Bacon attempted to restructure the educational system and base it on analytical thinking rather than a belief in God. This is even more harmful to the church because it would mean instilling the knowledge from science in people at a young age, making them susceptible to turning their backs on the church entirely. His system offered relief from “the human condition.” This implies that humans need to still be perfected and that we are not the center of the universe or God’s universe. The church preaches that we are God’s image, and by devaluing “the human condition” it devalues God and the church as well. The church was threatened by these two men because of the change and the evidence for their theories that they brought to a world that was formerly controlled by the church.