| Summary: | The reception of Bacon’s natural philosophy is paradoxical : it seems that even the “baconists” did not really read or understand Bacon’s works. I try to explain that discrepancy between Bacon’s thought and his epigones by studying the role of the reference to Bacon, as far as chemistry is concerned. In fact, such a baconism, even if it is not genuine, allows chemistry to use its proper principles, since it forbids to decide which are the true principles before the study of natural phenomena. Certainly, discourses about causes are “hypotheses”; but sometimes such a designation is only rhetorical. That signifies that, in spite of the claimed clash which past, the chemists of the Royal Society worked in the directions drawn by the “old” chemistry, using its principles. It does not mean that the chemists of the Royal Society were themselves “old”; it is rather a sign of the modernity of chemistry. Chemistry easily put up with baconism. This fact could mean that chemistry was the kind of science that Bacon had in mind when he proposed his Great Restauration.
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