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Table of Contents
Francis Bacon
Birth
Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, in London, England.1)
Early Work
Bacon's early work focused on law and politics, but he later turned his attention to philosophy and science.2)
Prolific Writer
He was a prolific writer and is known for his aphoristic style of writing.3)
Inductive Method Of Reasoning
He was a proponent of the inductive method of reasoning, which emphasizes observation and experimentation.4)
Observation And Experience
He argued that knowledge should be based on observation and experience rather than tradition or authority.5)
Novum Organum
Bacon's “Novum Organum” introduced the concept of the “Baconian method” for scientific investigation.6)
Science Should Improve Society
He believed that science should aim to improve the human condition and contribute to the advancement of society.7)
Knighted And Became A Baron
Bacon was knighted in 1603 and became a baron in 1618.8)
Accused Of Corruption And Bribery
He was accused of corruption and bribery during his time as Lord Chancellor and was subsequently impeached and fined.9)
Death
He died on April 9, 1626, in Highgate, London.10)
Pneumonia
Bacon's death is believed to have been caused by pneumonia, which he contracted after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if it would preserve the meat.11)
English philosopher
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, lawyer and essayist who lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Counted among the founders of empiricism, he contributed to the creation of modern scientific research methods. 12)
Member of Parliament
In 1595 he became a member of Parliament, in which he sat for the next nine years. He pursued his career mainly in the fields of legislation and the judiciary, reaching the position of advisor to King James I Stuart in 1604, then a chief prosecutor in the country (royal custodian of the law) in 1614. 13)
Valued experimental methods
In his views, he believed that there was little point in exploring science for its own sake. He valued experimental methods much more highly. Learning about the mechanisms of nature was, in his opinion, crucial in the process of man's mastery over the world. 14)
Forerunner of the theory of eliminative induction
Bacon is regarded as the forerunner of the theory of eliminative induction. It is based on the idea of starting from details and single facts to generalized laws and mechanisms occurring e.g. in nature. In order to prove whether the presented view and theory are true, he recommended making hypotheses that could be later confirmed or disproved. 15)
De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum
In his work De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623), he reviewed and personally classified all the sciences. Bacon divided them into history/memory (the description of facts that have previously occurred), poetry/imagination and philosophy/reason (any kind of cognition). 16)