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Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.
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- Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1974
References
1 A recent bibliography on mass communications lists 3,000 titles, selected from a total of some 10,000, which, judging by the select list, were virtually all produced in the United States during a period of twenty-two years. To be sure, not all these titles were concerned with public opinion in its political aspect. See Hansen, Donald A. and Parsons, J. H., Mass Communications: A Research Bibliography (Santa Barbara, 1968)Google Scholar
2 For the history of the concept of public opinion, I have found particularly useful Speier, Hans, ‘The Historical Development of Public Opinion’, American Journal of Sociology, lv (1950), pp. 376–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palmer, Paul A., ‘The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory’, in Essays in History and Political Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pp. 230–57Google Scholar; Bauer, Wilhelm, ‘Public Opinion’, in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1930–1935)Google Scholar; Bauer, Wilhelm, Die oeffentliche Meinung in der Weltgeschichte (Potsdam, 1930)Google Scholar; Toennies, Ferdinand, Kritik der oeffentlichen Meinung (Berlin, 1922)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. esp. ch. VIII, ‘Die oeffentliche Meinung als Faktor des Staatsleben’. Palmer gives other references which can be supplemented with those in Davison, W. Phillips and Leiserson, Avery, ‘Public Opinion’ in the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1968)Google Scholar.
3 The text will be found in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, James, Ellis, Robert L. and Heath, Douglas D. (new ed., London, 1870–1872), iii, pp. 119–66Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., p. 156.
5 Ibid., p. 165.
6 White, Howard B., Peace Among the Willows: the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague, 1968), p. 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 The principal work in which Bacon discussed his ‘new logic’ is the Novum Organum, first published in Latin in 1620. Translation in Works, iv, pp. 39–248.
8 Works, iv, pp. 449–50.
9 Ibid., p. 449.
10 Ibid., p. 449.
11 See, for instance, his discussion of private property in Book ii of The Politics. Aristotle's Politics, trans. Jowett, B. (Oxford, 1905), pp. 62–63Google Scholar.
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14 The Advancement of Learning, Works, iii, p. 409.
15 Works, p. 57.
16 This passage comes at pp. 572–82 in The Dialogues of Plato; trans. B. Jowett (3rd edn., Oxford, 1892), i. But the whole dialogue is relevant to my discussion. I am much indebted to Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Symposium (New Haven and London, 1968)Google Scholar.
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26 Ibid., ch. vi and passim.
27 Ibid., p. 235.
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29 ‘A word has appeared’, wrote the young Lasswell, Harold in 1927Google Scholar, ‘which has come to have an ominous clang in many minds—Propaganda’. Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York, 1927), p. 2Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., part viii.
31 Ibid., p. 313.
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38 Ibid., p. 7.
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44 The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Rosenman, Samuel I. (New York, 1938–1950), vGoogle Scholar. The People Approve: 1936, pp. 8–18.
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46 So says Rosenman, , Working With Roosevelt (New York, 1952), p. 106Google Scholar. Corcoran, on the other hand, recently assured me that the phrase was coined by William C. Bullitt, who was also helping with Presidential speeches at that time.
47 Moley, Raymond, After Seven Years (New York and London, 1939), pp. 347–48Google Scholar; New York Times, Sat. 27 June, 1936, p. 9.
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49 Official Report of the Proceedings of the Democratic Convention Held at Philadelphia, Penna., June 23rd to June 27th, inclusive, 1936 (n.d.), pp. 20–25.
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