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Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon
Library of Congress

[b. London, January 22, 1561, d. London, April 9, 1626]

Bacon's main influence on science was his emphasis on developing general laws that apply to observations, laws formed by thoughtfully collecting as many instances as possible and abstracting the laws in a process called induction. As a scientist himself, Bacon was nearly correct in explaining heat, although he reversed cause and effect by suggesting that the expansion of heated materials causes movements of their particles.


 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans

(born Jan. 22, 1561, London, Eng. — died April 9, 1626, London) British statesman and philosopher, father of modern scientific method. He studied at Cambridge and at Gray's Inn. A supporter of the Earl of Essex, Bacon turned against him when Essex was tried for treason. Under James I he rose steadily, becoming successively solicitor general (1607), attorney general (1613), and lord chancellor (1618). Convicted of accepting bribes from those being tried in his court, he was briefly imprisoned and permanently lost his public offices; he died deeply in debt. He attempted to put natural science on a firm empirical foundation in the Novum Organum (1620), which sets forth his scientific method. His elaborate classification of the sciences inspired the 18th-century French Encyclopedists (see Encyclopédie), and his empiricism inspired 19th-century British philosophers of science. His other works include The Advancement of Learning (1605), History of Henry VII (1622), and several important legal and constitutional works.

For more information on Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Francis Bacon

Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam, 1st Viscount St Albans (1561-1626). Lawyer, philosopher, and essayist. The son of a prominent lawyer, Bacon went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and then to the Inns of Court. In 1584 he became an MP. On the accession of James I, Bacon achieved rapid promotion, prosecuting Ralegh, raised to the peerage, and ending up as lord chancellor. But in 1621 he was convicted of taking bribes, and though soon pardoned, he had to give up public life.

His witty and pithy Essays were first published in 1597, and are splendid examples of English prose; in 1605 he brought out his Advancement of Learning. In this first exercise in writing about science, he was highly critical of the humanistic education he had received at Cambridge. In 1620 he published his Novum organum, presenting his philosophy of science in the form of aphorisms. In retirement, he collected and published information of a miscellaneous kind, in what was to be the Great Instauration. He died a martyr to science, from a chill caught trying to preserve a chicken by stuffing it with snow. After his death, the fragmentary New Atlantis was published in 1627: with its vision of an island governed by an Academy of Sciences. This is the most accessible and exciting of his writings on science. Bacon's science was organized common sense; and his vision of utility was gripping.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: Francis Bacon

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) English statesman and philosopher. As a philosopher of science Bacon is the first notable example of the empiricist tendency of English thought, but perhaps more importantly the prophet and protector of the dawning scientific revolution. He was a precocious child born into a leading family, and rapidly rose in the law, although not without questionable incident, as when at the behest of Elizabeth I he prosecuted the Earl of Essex, one of his earliest and principal patrons. His legal philosophy was one of absolute duty to the sovereign, which cannot have hindered his rise to the position of Lord Chancellor. In 1620, however, he was disgraced for bribery and spent his remaining years in seclusion. His collected works run to fourteen volumes, and include Essays (1597), The Advancement of Learning (1605), the Novum Organon (1620), and the New Atlantis (published posthumously, 1660).

Bacon was the first writer to try to delineate the proper methods of successful science, to enable science to become a craft or industry producing benefits for humanity rather than the haphazard pursuit of occasional eccentrics. Although the ‘Baconian method’ is sometimes identified with simple induction by enumeration (the generalizing from instances of phenomena to experimental laws), in fact Bacon provided a sophisticated taxonomy of scientific methods, in most respects anticipating such later results as Mill's methods, and certainly including an understanding that the search for laws was an imaginative and intellectual rather than a mechanical empirical exercise. His work included a running battle against the false approaches of metaphysics, and against superstition (his own attitude to religion certainly included some sceptical elements, and he regarded the whole matter as unimportant compared to science: ‘the research into final causes, like a virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing’). Diderot said of Bacon that his work amounted to a map of what men had to learn; he has often been described in terms of a prophet standing on the edge of the promised land of scientific knowledge. See also Baconian method, idols of the mind.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Bacon, Francis,
1561–1626, English philosopher, essayist, and statesman, b. London, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Gray's Inn. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth I. Francis Bacon was a member of Parliament in 1584 and his opposition to Elizabeth's tax program retarded his political advancement; only the efforts of the earl of Essex led Elizabeth to accept him as an unofficial member of her Learned Council. At Essex's trial in 1601, Bacon, putting duty to the state above friendship, assumed an active part in the prosecution—a course for which many have condemned him. With the succession of James I, Bacon's fortunes improved. He was knighted in 1603, became attorney general in 1613, lord keeper in 1617, and lord chancellor in 1618; he was created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Albans in 1621. In 1621, accused of accepting bribes as lord chancellor, he pleaded guilty and was fined £40,000, banished from the court, disqualified from holding office, and sentenced to the Tower of London. The banishment, fine, and imprisonment were remitted. Nevertheless, his career as a public servant was ended. He spent the rest of his life writing in retirement.

Bacon belongs to both the worlds of philosophy and literature. He projected a large philosophical work, the Instauratio Magna, but completed only two parts, The Advancement of Learning (1605), later expanded in Latin as De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), and the Novum Organum (1620). Bacon's contribution to philosophy was his application of the inductive method of modern science. He urged full investigation in all cases, avoiding theories based on insufficient data. However, he has been widely censured for being too mechanical, failing to carry his investigations to their logical ends, and not staying abreast of the scientific knowledge of his own day. In the 19th cent., Macaulay initiated a movement to restore Bacon's prestige as a scientist. Today his contributions are regarded with considerable respect. In The New Atlantis (1627) he describes a scientific utopia that found partial realization with the organization of the Royal Society in 1660. Noted for their style and their striking observations about life, his largely aphoristic Essays (1597–1625) are his best-known writings.

Bibliography

See his works (14 vol., 1857–74, repr. 1968); biography by L. Jardine and A. Stewart (1999); studies by J. Weinberger (1985) and P. Urbach (1987); D. W. Davies and E. S. Wrigley, ed., Concordance to the Essays of Francis Bacon (1973).

 
Dictionary: Ba·con1  ('kən) pronunciation, Francis. First Baron Verulam and Viscount Saint Albans 1561–1626.

English philosopher, essayist, courtier, jurist, and statesman. His writings include The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the Novum Organum (1620), in which he proposed a theory of scientific knowledge based on observation and experiment that came to be known as the inductive method.


 
History 1450-1789: Francis Bacon

Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), English natural philosopher, essayist, and statesman. Francis Bacon was the youngest son of Elizabeth I's lord keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and his second wife, Anne Cooke. Nephew by marriage to William Cecil, chief councillor to the queen, young Bacon was well positioned to succeed at court. Educated at Cambridge from the age of twelve, Bacon in 1576 began the study of law at Gray's Inn. He interrupted his legal studies that same year to accompany Sir Amias Paulet on a diplomatic mission to France. His father's sudden death recalled him home after three years' residence abroad. Because Sir Nicholas had not made adequate financial provisions for his youngest son, Francis now had to fend for himself financially. He continued his legal studies, becoming a bencher, or senior member, at Gray's in 1586. In 1584 Bacon became a member of Parliament, but thereafter failed to secure the position of solicitor general despite the assistance of his patron, Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. In 1597 he published the first version of his Essays, which he continued to revise and augment in later years. During Elizabeth's reign, Bacon only attained to the post of learned counsel extraordinary and the dubious honor of prosecuting his recalcitrant ex-patron, the earl of Essex, for his treasonous uprising in 1601.

James I's ascension to the English monarchy in 1603 marked a decided turn in Bacon's fortunes. Knighted and appointed to the position of king's counsel, Bacon thereafter became solicitor general (1607), attorney general (1613), member of the privy council (1616), and lord keeper (1617). He married Alice Barnham in 1606. In 1618, he was created Baron Verulam, and became lord chancellor. From 1604 until 1621, when he was impeached for bribery, Bacon advised the king on religious, financial, administrative, parliamentary, judicial, and foreign policy matters, as well as advocating for the political union of England and Scotland. As lord chancellor, he wrote important judicial decisions and sought to reform English law.

During this period, Bacon wrote extensively about ameliorating the human condition through his plans for the advancement of natural philosophy. His Advancement of Learning appeared in 1605, his natural philosophic reinterpretation of Greek mythology, De Sapientia Veterum, in 1609, the Novum Organum in 1620, and the Historia Ventorum in 1622. After his impeachment, Bacon devoted his final years to scientific writing and experiments. He died childless in 1626 from pneumonia contracted after a foray into winter snows with a chicken carcass to conduct an experiment in refrigeration.

Bacon achieved an incisive grasp of the most significant philosophical, social, and political issues of early modernism. In The Advancement of Learning, he took the measure of the intellectual ferment that comprised the contemporary intellectual scene. Aristotelian natural philosophy had lost preeminence and now competed with Neoplatonism, empiricism, alchemy, and ancient atomism, among other philosophical theories, in the effort to explicate the natural world. Bacon articulated the weaknesses of each intellectual movement and reincorporated its strengths into his own philosophical program. For Bacon, natural philosophy should begin with empirical observation and the painstaking compilation of natural histories. Inductive inquiry and the noting of particulars would be followed by controlled experiments (under natural and artificial conditions), which would yield first-level axioms or generalizations. These, in turn, would be corrected and refined by further inductive inquiry and experimentation until higher-level axioms, which were capable of producing useful material effects, were attained. To ensure the validity of inductive and experimental findings, Bacon required the natural philosopher to eschew the four "Idols of the Mind," those ways in which the human mind distorted knowledge through the peculiarities of nature, nurture, language, and ungrounded theorizing.

Bacon tried to ensure that his program was politically practical. He designed his new science to fit within the institutional framework of a Jacobean monarchy purportedly interested in mutually beneficial relations with commercial and artisanal sectors. Bacon imagined the scientific enterprise as a grand public works project that would enlist the energies and ideas of broad sectors of society but would remain under the auspices of royal government. Bacon's institution of natural philosophy would be to reconcile private intellectual ambitions with public interests to the benefit of civil society, as his scientific utopia, the New Atlantis (1627), envisioned.

Francis Bacon never gained financial or political support for his scientific program during his lifetime. His philosophic influence in England was negligible during the first third of the seventeenth century, although his importance was understood in the 1620s by Continental philosophers such as Pierre Gassendi, Marin Mersenne, René Descartes, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Beeckman. By mid-century, however, Bacon's works were highly valued everywhere. In the 1640s, Protestant educational reformists led by Samuel Hartlib saw Bacon as a forerunner. John Wilkins, Seth Ward, and John Webster followed Bacon in attempting to devise an accurate scientific language. But Bacon's greatest influence was on the early members of England's Royal Society (est. 1662), who viewed him as their intellectual progenitor. Bacon's star blazed bright into the eighteenth century, but was clouded in the nineteenth, when biographers charged him with perfidy in prosecuting his treasonous former patron, the earl of Essex. Nonetheless, the upsurge in published studies of Bacon's life and work at the turn of the twenty-first century makes evident his status as a seminal figure in the history of early modern science.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning. Edited by Michael Kiernan. Oxford, 2000.

——. The Essayes or Counsel, Civill and Morall. Edited by Michael Kiernan. Oxford, 1985.

——. The New Organon. Edited by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2000. Translation of Novum Organum (1620).

Secondary Sources

Solomon, Julie Robin. Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry. Baltimore, 2003.

Weinberger, Jerry. Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age. Ithaca, N.Y., 1985.

Whitney, Charles. Francis Bacon and Modernity. New Haven, 1986.

—JULIE ROBIN SOLOMON

 
History Dictionary: Bacon, Francis

An English politician, scientist, and author of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; one of the leaders of the Renaissance in England. (See also under “Literature in English.”)

 
Essay: Francis Bacon and the scientific method

Francis Bacon is one of the important thinkers of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. Although Bacon was neither a mathematician nor an experimental scientist, he exerted great influence on his contemporaries by introducing a method in which science is based on observation and experimentation.

He argued that the sciences should follow the example of the "mechanical arts" by being "founded on nature." But he also asserted that the mechanical arts should have science as their master. Bacon was one of the first thinkers to bridge the gap that existed between technology and the sciences. Since antiquity, technical invention was unrelated to science; it was the domain of the artisan. Artisans built machines based on empirical experience only. Science was thought to deal with ideas only. Bacon strongly opposed this concept and asserted that the knowledge of practical things also belongs to science. Because Bacon was not a scientist himself (although he died from a cold caught while stuffing a chicken with snow in an experiment with refrigeration), he extended his ideas on science to every aspect of human life. In Bacon's view, science not only serves to fulfill our intellectual curiosity, but it is also useful in all phases of humanity.

Bacon was one of the first to fully understand that knowledge is power. He believed science would serve to improve the human condition and create a better world, and stated that the final goal of science is "the relief of man's estate" and the "effecting of all things possible."

Bacon described a model of such a better world in his book New Atlantis. New Atlantis is an island with a utopian society whose well-being is entirely based on science and technology. In his book Bacon gave his contemporaries an extraordinary look into the future of technology. He mentions the skyscraper ("High Towers, the Highest about half a Mile in height"), the refrigeration of food, air-conditioning ("Chambers of Health, wher wee qualifie the Aire"), telephones ("meanes to convey Sounds in Trunks and Pipes"), airplanes, and submarines.

 
Quotes By: Francis Bacon

Quotes:

"He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other."

"There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self."

"The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall."

"People of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."

"Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read."

"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."

See more famous quotes by Francis Bacon

 
Wikipedia: Francis Bacon

for the painter see Francis Bacon (painter)


Western Philosophy
Renaissance philosophy
Francis_Bacon.jpg
Sir Francis Bacon

Name

Francis Bacon

Birth

22 January 1561

Death

9 April 1626

School/tradition

Empiricism

Influences

Democritus, Plato

Influenced

Diderot, Hobbes, Hume

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (22 January 15619 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.

Memorial to Francis Bacon, in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge
Enlarge
Memorial to Francis Bacon, in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge

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

Monument to Bacon at his burial place, St Michael's Church in St Albans
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Monument to Bacon at his burial place, St Michael's Church in St Albans

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

  1. ^ A. Chambers Bunten Life of Alice Barnham London: Oliphants Ltd. 1928.
  2. ^ A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History, New York: Carroll & Garf, 1977. page 44
  3. ^ Rictor Norton, "Sir Francis Bacon", The Great Queens of History, updated 8 Jan. 2000 http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/baconfra.htm
  4. ^ Jardine, Lisa; Stewart, Alan Hostage To Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon Hill & Wang, 1999. page 148
  5. ^ Mathews, Nieves Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, Yale University Press, 1996
  6. ^ [1]
  7. ^ Bryant, Mark: Private Lives, 2001, p.22.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ 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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Political offices
Preceded by
Sir Thomas Egerton
Lord High Chancellor
1617–1621
Succeeded by
In Commission
Parliament of England (to 1707)
Preceded by
Unknown
Unknown
Member of Parliament for Taunton
with: Unknown

1586–1588
Succeeded by
Unknown
Unknown
Preceded by
Unknown
Unknown
Member of Parliament for Liverpool
with: Unknown

1588–1594
Succeeded by
Unknown
Unknown
Peerage of England
Preceded by
New Creation
Viscount St Alban
1621–1626
Succeeded by
Extinct
Baron Verulam
1618–1626

 This article is largely based on the article in the out-of-copyright 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which was produced in 1911. It should be brought up to date to reflect subsequent history or scholarship (including the references, if any). When you have completed the review, replace this notice with a simple note on this article's talk page. Thanks!


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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