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Period: Jan 22, 1561 to
Life of Francis Bacon
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1580
Earl of Essex
During this phase of his life, he particularly devoted himself to natural philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/ -
Gesta Grayorum
Bacon had emphasized the necessity of scientific improvement and progress. Since he failed to secure for himself a position in the government, he considered giving up politics and concentrating on natural philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/ -
The Advancement of Learning
He continues his struggle with tradition, primarily with classical antiquity, rejecting the book learning of the humanists, on the grounds that they “hunt more after words than matter” (Bacon III [1887], 283). He rejects Aristotle's logic, which is based on his metaphysical theory, whereby the false doctrine is implied that the experience which comes to us by means of our senses (things as they appear) automatically presents to our understanding things as they are. -
Temporis partus masculus
Bacon rediscovers the Pre-Socratic philosophers for himself, especially the atomists and among them Democritus as the leading figure. He gives preference to Democritus' natural philosophy in contrast to the scholastic—and thus Aristotelian—focus on deductive logic and belief in authorities. Bacon does not expect any approach based on tradition to start with a direct investigation of nature and then to ascend to empirical and general knowledge. -
The Idols
Analytic works with “true forms of consequences in argument” (Bacon IV [1901], 429), which become faulty by variation and deflection. The complete doctrine of detection of fallacies, according to Bacon, contains three segments:- Sophistical fallacies,
- Fallacies of interpretation, and
- False appearances or Idols.
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System of Sciences
Within the history of occidental philosophy and science, Bacon identifies only three revolutions or periods of learning: the heyday of the Greeks and that of the Romans and Western Europe in his own time.
Natural science is divided by Bacon into physics and metaphysics. The former investigates variable and particular causes, the latter reflects on general and constant ones, for which the term form is used. -
Death and Legacy
he Royal Society utilized Bacon's applied science approach and followed the steps of his reformed scientific method. Scientific institutions followed this model in kind. Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes played the role of Bacon's last amanuensis. The "father of classic liberalism," John Locke, as well as 18th-century encyclopedic and inductive logicians David Hume and John Mill, also showed Bacon's influence in their work.