for the painter see Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (22 January 1561
– 9 April 1626) was an English
philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He is also known as a proponent of the scientific
revolution. Indeed, according to John Aubrey, his dedication may have brought him
into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often
called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. In the context of his time such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy[citation needed]. Nevertheless, his demand for a planned procedure of investigating all
things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds
conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Alban in 1621; without heirs,
both peerages became extinct upon his death. He has been credited as the creator of the English
essay.[citation needed]
Early life
Francis Bacon was born at York House, Strand, London. He was the youngest of five sons of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I. His mother, Ann Cook, was Sir Nicholas's second
wife. She was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and a member of the Reformed
Puritan Church. His (maternal) aunt married William Cecil (Lord Burghley), the chief minister of Queen Elizabeth I.
Biographers believe that Bacon received an education at home in his early years, and that his health during that time, as
later, was delicate. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 at the
age of twelve, living for three years there with his older brother Anthony.
At Cambridge he first met the Queen, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to call him "the young
Lord Keeper".
There also his studies of science brought him to the conclusion that the methods (and thus the results) were erroneous. His
reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his dislike of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed
to him barren, disputatious, and wrong in its objectives.
On 27 June 1576, he and Anthony were entered de societate
magistrorum at Gray's Inn, and a few months later they went abroad with Sir
Amias Paulet, the English ambassador at
Paris. The disturbed state of government and society in France under Henry III afforded him valuable political
instruction.
The sudden death of his father in February 1579 necessitated Bacon's return to England, and seriously influenced his fortunes.
Sir Nicholas had laid up a considerable sum of money to purchase an estate for his youngest son, but he died before doing so, and
Francis was left with only a fifth of that money. Having started with insufficient means, he borrowed money and became habitually
in debt. To support himself, he took up his residence in law at Gray's Inn in 1579.
Career
Bacon's goals were threefold: discovery of truth, service to his country, and service to the church. Knowing that a
prestigious post would aid him toward these ends, in 1580 he applied, through his uncle, Lord Burghley, for a post at court which might enable him to devote himself to a life
of learning. His application failed, and for the next two years he worked quietly at Gray's Inn giving himself seriously to the
study of law, until admitted as an outer barrister in
1582. In 1584 he took his seat in parliament for Melcombe in Dorset, and subsequently for Taunton (1586). He wrote on the condition of parties in the church, and he wrote down his thoughts on
philosophical reform in the lost tract, Temporis Partus Maximus, but he failed to obtain a position of the kind he thought
necessary for his own success.
In the Parliament of 1586 he took a prominent part in urging the execution of Mary Queen
of Scots. About this time he seems again to have approached his powerful uncle, the result of which may possibly be traced
in his rapid progress at the bar, and in his receiving, in 1589, the reversion to the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, a valuable appointment, the enjoyment of which, however, he did not enter into until
1608.
During this period Bacon became acquainted with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl
of Essex (1567–1601), Queen Elizabeth's favorite. By 1591 he was acting as
the earl's confidential adviser. Bacon took his seat for Middlesex when in February 1593
Elizabeth called a Parliament to investigate a Roman Catholic plot against her.
His opposition to a bill that would levy triple subsidies in half the usual time (he objected to the time span) offended many
people; he was accused of seeking popularity, and was for a time excluded from the court. When the Attorney-Generalship fell vacant in 1594 and Bacon became a candidate for the office, Lord Essex's
influence could not secure him the position; in fashion, Bacon failed to become solicitor in
1595. To console him for these disappointments, Essex presented him with a property at Twickenham, which he subsequently sold for £1800, the equivalent of around £240,000 today.
In 1596 he was made a Queen's Counsel, but missed the appointment of Master of the Rolls. During the next few years, his financial situation remained bad. His friends
could find no public office for him, a scheme for retrieving his position by a marriage with the wealthy widow Lady
Elizabeth Hatton failed, and in 1598 he was arrested for debt. His standing in the
queen's eyes, however, was beginning to improve. He gradually acquired the standing of one of the learned counsel, though he had
no commission or warrant and received no salary. His relationship with the queen also improved when he severed ties with Essex, a
fortunate move considering that the latter would be executed for treason in 1601; and Bacon was one of those appointed to
investigate the charges against him, and examine witnesses, in connection with which he showed eagerness in pressing the case
against his former friend and benefactor. This act Bacon endeavoured to justify in A Declaration of the Practices and
Treasons, etc., of ... the Earl of Essex, etc. He received a gift of a fine of £1200 on one of Essex's accomplices.
The accession of James I brought Bacon into greater favour; he was knighted in
1603, and endeavoured to set himself right with the new powers by writing his Apologie (defence) of his proceedings in the
case of Essex, who had favoured the succession of James. Bacon was present at the state opening of parliament in 1605, which
would have all but certainly made him a victim of the Gunpowder Plot had it succeeded.
The following year, during the course of the uneventful first parliament session Bacon married Alice Barnham (1592–1650), the fourteen year old daughter of a well-connected London alderman and M.P.
In 1608, Bacon entered upon the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and was in the enjoyment
of a large income; but old debts and present extravagance kept him embarrassed, and he endeavoured to obtain further promotion
and wealth by supporting the king in his arbitrary policy. However, Bacon's services were rewarded in June 1607 with the office
of Solicitor. In 1610 the famous fourth parliament of James met. Despite Bacon's advice to him, James and the Commons found
themselves frequently at odds over royal prerogatives and the king's embarrassing extravagance, and the House was dissolved in
February 1611. Through this Bacon managed in frequent debate to uphold the prerogative, while retaining the confidence of the
Commons. In 1613, Bacon was finally able to become attorney general, by dint of
advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments; and in this capacity he would prosecute Somerset in 1616. The parliament of April 1614 objected to Bacon's presence in the
seat for Cambridge — he was allowed to stay, but a law was passed that forbade
the attorney-general to sit in parliament — and to the various royal plans which Bacon had supported. His obvious influence over
the king inspired resentment or apprehension in many of his peers.
Bacon continued to receive the King's favour, and in 1618 was appointed by James to the position of Lord Chancellor. His public career ended in disgrace in 1621 when, after having fallen into debt, a
Parliamentary Committee on the administration of the law charged him with corruption under twenty-three counts. To the lords, who
sent a committee to inquire whether the confession was really his, he replied, "My lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I
beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000, remitted by the king, to be
committed to the Tower of London during the king's pleasure (his imprisonment in fact
lasted only a few days). More seriously, Lord St Alban was declared incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament.
He narrowly escaped being deprived of his titles. Thenceforth the disgraced viscount devoted himself to study and writing.
It has been argued by Nieves Mathews that Bacon was in fact innocent of the
bribery charges; Bacon himself claimed he was forced to plead guilty so as to save King James
from a political scandal, stating:
I was the justest judge, that was in England these last fifty years. When the book of all hearts is opened, I trust I shall
not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart. I know I have clean hands and a clean heart. I am as innocent of
bribes as any born on St Innocents Day.
Reports of increasing friction in his marriage to Alice Barnham appeared, with
speculation that some of this may have also been due to financial resources not being as readily available to Alice as she was
accustomed to having in the past. Alice was reportedly interested in fame and fortune, and when reserves of money were no longer
available, there were complaints about where all the money was going.[1]Francis disinherited her upon discovering her secret romantic relationship with John Underhill. He
rewrote his will, which had previously been very generous to her (leaving her lands, goods, and income), to revoke it all.
Sexuality
Several contemporary commentators discussed Bacon's love life, addressing principally his alleged relationships with other
males. Of relationships with women only one is known: his late marriage to his wife, a marriage considered to be emotionally
distant.
John Aubrey, in his Brief Lives, notwithstanding his
generally favorable attitude towards the philosopher, asserts he "was a pederast" and had
"ganimeds and favourites."
In 1619 the ire of the church itself was aroused by Bacon's doings: a minister of the time preached a public sermon in which
he inveighed against the scandal caused by Bacon's "catamites," as recorded in a published transcript.
Simonds d'Ewes discusses Bacon's habits in his Autobiography. In the entry for
May 3rd, 1621 he writes: His most abominable and darling sinne I should rather burie in silence, than mencion it, and then
proceeds to mention it: yet would he not relinquish the practice of his most horrible & secret sinne of sodomie, keeping still one Godrick, a verie effeminate faced youth, to bee his catamite and bedfellow. This
practice he deems not a rare indulgence: his unnaturall crime, which hee had practiced manie yeares, deserting the bedd of his
Ladie, which hee accounted, as the Italians and the Turkes doe, a
poore & meane pleasure in respect of the other. According to d'Ewes, this behavior was known to a number of other
contemporaries, leading to calls for his being brought to trial: & it was thought by some, that hee should have been tried
at the barre of justice for it, & have satisfied the law most severe against that horrible villanie with the price of his
bloud; which caused some bold and forward man to write these verses following in a whole sheete of paper, & to cast it down
in some part of Yorkehouse in the strand, wheere Viscount St. Alban yet lay:
Within this sty a *hogg doth ly,
That must be hang'd for Sodomy.
-
- (*alluding both to his sirname of Bacon, & to that swinish abominable sinne.)
Bacon's homosexual relationships, according to contemporary descriptions, appear to
have been primarily with his household servants. Among these is one Henry Percy, who was bequeathed the large sum of £100 and for
whom he wrote a letter to the Secretary of State recommending the man to his Majesty's service, one of the very last letters he
wrote. This is thought to be the same Percy of whom Bacon's mother wrote, irately, that bloody Percy who was kept yea
as a coach companion and a bed companion.
Based on this evidence, several modern authors, such as historians A. L. Rowse,[2] Rictor Norton,[3] and Professor of English and Comparative Literature Alan
Stewart,[4] conclude that he did indeed have homosexual
inclinations.
Nieves Mathews,[5] claims that the sources are not
conclusive. She dismisses d'Ewes as an "enemy." However he is regarded as a responsible and scrupulous lawyer. John Aubrey she
discounts for having written his biography after Bacon's death. The note by Ann Bacon in which she expressed disapproval of the
friends Francis (and his brother Anthony, who was himself a pederast who was tried for his relationship with a page and narrowly
escaped punishment at the hands of the French legal system) were associating with, Mathews blames not on criticism of her son's
amorous habits but because one was a "Papist," and money was owned to her sons. However, coaches were one of the few private
spaces at the time, thus the term "coach companion" is a clear reference to sexual doings.[6] While contesting Bacon's identification as a homosexual, Mathews' provides no
evidence to support her theory of Bacon's heterosexuality.
Death
In March 1626, Lord St Alban came to London. Continuing his scientific research, he was journeying to Highgate through the
snow with the King's physician when, as John Aubrey recounts in Brief Lives, he was suddenly inspired by the possibility of using the snow to preserve meat. According to Aubrey "They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the
coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it".
After stuffing the fowl with snow, he happened to contract a fatal case of pneumonia. He then
attempted to extend his fading lifespan by consuming the fowl that had caused his illness. Some people, including Aubrey,
consider these two contiguous, possibly coincidental events as related and causative of his death: "The Snow so chilled him that
he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging ...but went to the Earle of Arundel's house at
Highgate, where they put him into ... a damp bed that had not been layn-in ... which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as
I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation." He died at Lord Arundel's home[7] in Highgate on 9 April
1626, leaving assets of about £7,000 and debts to the amount of £22,000.
Works and philosophy
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours
of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the
Meditations. He published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem
memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works
which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna, the most important part
of which is the Novum Organum (published 1620). Bacon also wrote the Astrologia
Sana and expressed his belief that stars had physical effects on the planet. He is also known for The New Atlantis, a utopian novel he wrote in 1626.
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy; he wrote that, whilst philosophy at
the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead
proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to
axiom to law. Before beginning this induction, the inquirer is to
free his mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. These are called "Idols"[8] (idola), and are of four kinds: "Idols of the Tribe"
(idola tribus), which are common to the race; "Idols of the Den"
(idola specus), which are peculiar to the individual; "Idols of the Marketplace"
(idola fori), coming from the misuse of language; and "Idols of the Theatre"
(idola theatri), which result from an abuse of authority. The end of induction is the
discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which
they proceed.
Bacon's somewhat fragmentary ethical system, derived through use of his methods, is explicated in the seventh and eighth books
of his De augmentis scientiarum (1623). He distinguishes between duty to the community, an ethical matter, and duty to
God, a purely religious matter. Any moral action is the action of the human will,
which is governed by reason and spurred on by the passions; habit is what aids men in directing their will toward the good. No
universal rules can be made, as both situations and men's characters differ.
Bacon distinctly separated religion and philosophy,
though the two can coexist. Where philosophy is based on reason, faith is based on revelation, and therefore irrational — in
De augmentis he writes that "the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is
shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith." And yet he writes in "The Essays: Of Atheism" that "a
little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion", suggesting he
continued to employ inductive reasoning in all areas of his life, including his own spiritual beliefs.
Bacon contrasted the new approach, of the development of science, with that of the Middle Ages. He once said, to top it all
off: "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they
employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions
to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."
On 3 world-changing inventions
In Bacon's work Novum Organum, he cites three world-changing inventions:
- "Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the
first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no
empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries."
[9]
Others
Bacon's ideas about the improvement of the human lot were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among a number of
Parliamentarian scholars. During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the new-founded Royal Society. In the nineteenth century his emphasis on
induction was revived and developed by William
Whewell, among others.
Bacon was ranked #90 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most
influential figures in history.
Bacon and Shakespeare
The so-called 'Shakespearean authorship question', which ascribes the famous plays to various contemporaries instead of
Shakespeare, has produced a large number of candidates, of whom Bacon is one of the most popular. An 1888 two-volume book, "The
Great Cryptogram", by American journalist and adventurer Ignatius Donnely, had much to do with this. Donnely developed complex
numerical schemes for working out hidden messages within the plays, but his methods "were so flexible that one could literally
use them to obtain any desired text."[6] Donnely himself used them to discover that Bacon had written not only Shakespeare, but
Montaigne and Marlowe as well.[7] After Donnely the Baconian theory became extremely popular and gave birth to many further
studies of Bacon's cipher. Edward Clark's late 19th century "The Tale of the Shakspere Epitaph by Francis Bacon" referred to an
inscription on a bust of Shakespeare which he asserted concealed the sentence, "FRA BA WRT EAR AY", an abbreviation of "Francis
Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays." Another author,Francis Carr, has suggested that Bacon wrote not only Shakespeare's plays but
Don Quixote as well,[8] while Dr Orville Owen, in his monumantal (5 volumes) "Francis Bacon's Cipher Story" (1893-95), recounted
his success in using a special machine to prove Bacon the true author of Shakespeare and the son of the Earl of Leicester and
Elizabeth I. Even Mark Twain was a Baconian arguing vigorously for Bacon and ridiculing the "Stratfordolators" and the
"Shakespearoids" in "Is Shakespeare Dead?" (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1909).[9]
Timeline
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See also
Notes
- ^ A. Chambers Bunten Life of Alice Barnham London: Oliphants Ltd.
1928.
- ^ A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History, New York: Carroll & Garf,
1977. page 44
- ^ Rictor Norton, "Sir Francis Bacon", The Great Queens of History, updated 8
Jan. 2000 http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/baconfra.htm
- ^ Jardine, Lisa; Stewart, Alan Hostage To Fortune: The Troubled Life of
Francis Bacon Hill & Wang, 1999. page 148
- ^ Mathews, Nieves Francis Bacon: The History of a Character
Assassination, Yale University Press, 1996
- ^ [1]
- ^ Bryant, Mark: Private Lives, 2001, p.22.
- ^ "Idols" is the usual translation of idola, but 'illusion' is perhaps
a more accurate translation to modern English. See footnote, The New Organon, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr.,
2000), p.18.
- ^ Novum Organum, Liber I, CXXIX - Adapted from the 1863 translation
References
- Some material originally from the 1911 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion.
- Some material originally from the 1912 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion.
- John Farrell, "The Science of Suspicion." Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006), chapter
six.
- "Our Western Heritage" Roselle / Young: Chapter five "The 'Scientific Revolution' and the 'Intellectual Revolution'".
External links
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| Persondata |
| NAME |
Bacon, Francis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, Francis (full name and title); Verulam, Baron (title); St Alban, Viscount (title) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Philosopher and statesman |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
22 January 1561(1561--) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Strand, London, England |
| DATE OF DEATH |
9 April 1626 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
Highgate, London, England |
pms:Francis Bacon
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