Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon 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).

Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Albans (1561–1626) British philosopher, statesman and early advocate of the scientific method. He was also an important essayist. Successively attorney-general, lord keeper and lord chancellor, he was forced to resign his offices in 1621 when found guilty of corruption. None of this interrupted his efforts to break the hold of Aristotelian logic and establish an inductive empiricism. He entertained the idea of cataloguing all useful knowledge in his Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620). The New Atlantis (1627) discusses his philosophy as practised in an imaginary nation.

Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), philosopher. Under James I he held various offices, in 1618 becoming Lord Chancellor and Lord Verulam. In 1621 he confessed to bribery and corruption, ending his public career.

In his Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (written c.1608, pub., 1620) Bacon stressed two characteristics of natural knowledge: almost unprecedently, he held that knowledge was cumulative, that it is possible to enlarge rather than simply preserve the wisdom of the past; and he insisted that the sort of knowledge that should be pursued is for practical ends, as the indispensable means to the ‘relief of man's estate’. The New Atlantis (1627, posthumous) embodies his conception of natural enquiry as a cooperative undertaking. His Essays, mainly worldly moralizing, appeared with additions in each new edition (1597, 1612, and 1625); that on ‘Atheism’ first came out in 1612.

Bacon held that by natural knowledge we can establish the existence of God, but that we have to depend on revelation for knowledge of His nature, action, and purposes. He took the rational soul to be implanted in the human body by God, thus securing its immortality.