The Clue to the Labyrinth:
Francis Bacon and the Decryption of Nature
by
Peter Pesic
_______
originally published in
Cryptologia, July 2000
As their ancestor Daedalus built the labyrinth, Bacon calls on the new breed of
scientist to breach that inmost sanctuary. In complex images, he calls them to
pierce the veil of the temple of nature through their penetrating interpretations,
"preparing a way into her inner chambers" (4.124), into the very center of the
labyrinth. In Mark's gospel, the veil of the temple was rent by the death of the
Savior; Bacon's metaphor draws more on the solemn entrance of the High Priest
into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. The select priesthood of
Salomon's House also is properly prepared so that it can penetrate the veil over
nature through gaining a certain clue, a certain kind of interpretation. "We must use
induction, true and legitimate induction, which is the very key of interpretation"
(4.127). If these scientific priests can reach the center of the maze, they will find
the "summary laws of nature" and can use them to grasp immense power for the
benefit of humankind.
To find the guiding thread, Bacon envisaged a symbolic and schematic "alphabet
of Nature" that would help flawed human understanding reach the "inner courts" of
Nature.29 The key needed for interpretation is not a fixed structure like a skeleton
key, but rather a "key" in the cryptographic sense: a flexible indicator that guides
decryption by delineating the emergent structure of the cipher. The essential
preparation for induction is the exhaustive preparation of "tables and arrangements
of instances, in such a method and order that the understanding may be able to deal
with them"; Bacon also organizes his "alphabet of Nature" in similar tables
(5.210). He cannot give full examples without having essentially completed
investigations to a degree he knows is far beyond his capacity, or perhaps beyond
that of any solitary seeker; only the whole "machine" is adequate. However, in the
Novum organism he does give an extended attempt at tables regarding the nature
of heat, leading to results strikingly like the view of modern kinetic theory, in
which heat is a form of atomic motion. What is important here are the tables
themselves, manifold and detailed, going through many possible permutations of
the instances in which are enumerated instances of "essence and presence" or
"proximity where the nature of heat is absent" or "exclusion" or "degrees" of heat.
These tables resemble the tables used for encipherment and decipherment, though
not for natural language but rather "things themselves."30 A cryptanalyst examines
the possible correlations between the appearances of certain letters in the cipher
text, singly or by pairs or triplets, arranging the results in tabular form. Read
negatively, this table also shows which ciphered letters are not correlated with
which others. Other tables note the order in which letters are correlated, preceding
or following others. Likewise, Bacon's tables marshal parallel data for heat, citing
all the known correlations, exclusions, and the degrees thereof (see Figure 4). The
Latin word tabula was used extensively for tables of encipherment already in the
first printed work on cryptography, Trithemius' Polygraphia (1518). From the
earliest sources on, cryptography had relied on such tabular arrays to give the
visible key for the encipherment. The word "tabula" or the French "tableau" are
already common usage in Porta and Vigenere. By the time of the great Antoine
Rossignol (1599-1682) there are distinguished "tables a chiffrer" from "tables a
dechiffrer," indicating the greater systematization of deciphering as well as of
enciphering. Given Bacon's detailed knowledge, it seems very likely that either he
himself tried cryptanalysis, saw work in progress, or heard accounts of it. His
posing of a new, more secure cipher shows that he was fully aware of the powers
of expert cryptanalysts and, quite likely, of their detailed methods. At the very
least, he seems to know of the tables of earlier cryptographers, for he sets out his
own biliteral cipher in tabular form (4.445-6; see Figure 3).
The cryptanalyst's tables are a necessary starting point for systematic decryption.
They permit certain deeply embedded linguistic features (such as the frequency of
the letter "e" in English) to emerge and lead to solution. Bacon's tables proceed by
the same logical categories of inclusion and exclusion, of quantity and correlation,
that give the cryptanalyst's tables their revelatory power. Far from being
undifferentiated lists of instances, his carefully structured tables are intended to be
the key to full decryption. In the case of heat, Bacon tries a "First Vintage" or
"Commencement of Interpretation." He tries to gather together "all the instances in
which the thing itself is to be found" to give a first working hypothesis which he
can then test and vex further (4.149).31 He also notes "Striking or Shining
Instances," which give paradigmatic examples that are particularly forceful
instances of the preliminary hypothesis. Such devices also are tools of the
cryptanalyst, for whom the tables are only a beginning to the real work. The tables,
after all, must be read, with all the interpretative acuity that word might invoke.
Telling passages in the cipher text must be located and probed; hypotheses need to
be formed and tested, even if finally discarded, in order that correct order emerge.
Bacon may well have noted the special acuity that marks out a gifted cryptanalyst
from those who can only compile exhaustive tables. This important distinction
certainly marks his vision of the social structure of science. Though he calls for a
science which should be done "as if by machinery" (4.40), both cryptanalysis and
the hunt for the inner forms of nature require art and imaginative leaps that go
beyond merely pedestrian accumulation of correlations. In his scientific utopia,
the New Atlantis, the master scientists are few, though they rely on many others for
the immense work of collecting instances. However, only select minds can make
the leap from the tables to the unifying insight that completes the work of
discovery. Bacon gives images of these singular discoverers in his mythical tales,
for the decipherers of the labyrinth and the solvers of the riddle are unique heroes,
not to be confounded with their crews and companions, however invaluable. The
key to the labyrinth is a clue ( filum), a delicate thread that must be handled with
care, lest it break. The "machinery" of cryptology or of science must not obscure
the central role of the exceptional talents on whom the whole enterprise depends.
Otherwise, the truly new or unexpected will defeat a machine calibrated to past
discoveries.
Accordingly, Bacon thought that true reading of the Book of Nature was reserved
to those few who could follow the thread; the rest of humanity - including the wise
king that rules his New Atlantis - must wait upon the disclosures of the scientists.
Yet this implies a fateful removal of nature from common understanding. As
Curtius observes, "The book of nature no longer legible? -- a revolutionary change
had occurred, which penetrated the consciousness of the humblest. “32. Moreover,
even the scientists cannot anticipate what is to come; the great discoveries of the
past had been quite unexpected. Genuinely new interpretations must "seem harsh
and out of tune, much as the mysteries of faith do" (4.52). Bacon himself did not
expect that mathematics would be so crucial; his ignorance of contemporary
developments in mathematics limited his vision. When Galileo claimed the
Book of Nature was written in "the language of mathematics" he was
consciously correcting what he considered Bacon's greatest mistake. The
fragmentary indications of Bacon's interest in symbolic language in his "alphabet
of nature" make one suspect that, had he known of them, Bacon might have
embraced the innovations of Viete and Descartes, which initiate mathematics as
decryption. 33” Even more fundamentally, though, Bacon discerned the
fundamentally new approach to the Book of Nature that transformed the
character both of the Book and finally of Nature itself.
PW 3/2013