Francis Bacon

English philosopher

• Born: January 22, 1561
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: April 9, 1626
• Place of death: London, England

The first to use the English language instead of Latin for a philosophical treatise with his Advancement of Learning, Bacon is credited with the formulation of modern scientific thought. His essays are widely admired for their worldly witticism and have become classics of the form.

Early Life

Francis Bacon was born at York House in London to Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the Seal of England, and his second wife, née Ann Cooke, who was related to nobility through her sister, the wife of William Cecil, the later Lord Burghley. In 1573, at the age of twelve, Bacon entered Trinity College, Cambridge, which he left in 1576 for Gray’s Inn, thus following in his father’s steps and beginning a legal career.

After a brief visit to the French court in the entourage of Sir Amias Paulet from 1576 until his father’s death in 1579, Francis Bacon stayed with the Inn and was called to the bar in 1582, two years before he began to complement his legal work with an ambitiously undertaken political career that commenced with his membership in Parliament.

After advancement to the position of queen’s counsel in 1589, his career stalled under Elizabeth I , whom he seemed to have offended in a parliamentary debate regarding the implementation of regal subsidiaries in 1593; his enemies at court used the opportunity to bar his way to promotion, seeing in Bacon (not wholly unjustly) not only an ambitious, prolific writer of political advice but also an unscrupulous seeker of preferment. Again, on the personal level, his friendship with the young earl of Essex did not bring him hoped-for political gain; in 1601, after Essex’s ill-considered rebellion against the queen, Bacon’s position required him to partake in the prosecution of his former friend.

Whereas An Advertisement Touching the Controversies of the Church of England (1589) had brought Bacon political advancement, his later work of political advice did not benefit him professionally. During a long period of arrested political development until Elizabeth I’s death, Bacon showed himself stubborn and inclined to use the common practice of patronage and favoritism to lobby for a higher position. In his own office, he became a rather successful mediator of conflicts and tried hard but finally inefficiently to smooth the waves after Essex’s insubordination preceding his open revolt against the queen.

A later painting shows Bacon as a tall, bearded officer wearing his regalia and insignia proudly; the picture suggests the reserved, somewhat unemotional yet nevertheless personally sensitive character that his later biographers have asserted on the basis of accounts from Bacon’s chaplain and secretary William Rawley. At forty-five, he married Alice Barnham, daughter of a London alderman, who survived him; they had no children.

Life’s Work

Bacon’s long period of relative political inactivity under Elizabeth I gave him time to write the first ten of his Essayes , which saw publication in 1597, and again, because of their popularity, in 1612 and in 1625, both times with significant enlargements that brought the total number to fifty-eight. A master of the essay form, which he helped to forge, Bacon here looks at people and their government realistically, free of passionate idealism and zeal for the betterment of humanity. What his critics have called his Machiavellian and emotionless coldness nevertheless facilitated a witty discourse on the world as it really is, and not as it should be in the eyes of reformers. With this was coupled political advice, as in “On Dissimulation” or “On Plantations,” against the shortsightedness, greed, and abuses of his time.

The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Humane (1605), which he later enlarged into the Latin version De augmentis scientiarum (1623; best known as Advancement of Learning , represents his first step toward the formulation of a new method for looking at the natural world through the eyes of the experimenting and hypothesizing scientist who has purged his vision of religious allegory or Platonic metaphysics or Aristotelian dialectics.

Bacon’s political fortunes changed in the reign of James I , which saw his ascension from his knighthood in 1603 through the office of attorney general (1613) to the high position of lord keeper in 1617, before he was made lord chancellor and baron verulam and ultimately created Viscount Saint Albans in 1621, at the age of sixty.

During these years of success, Bacon wrote the Instauratio magna (1620; The Great Instauration , 1653), the planned preface, never completed, for six different works intended to describe a restoration of human knowledge; as is, it is a powerful model for radical change in the pattern of Western scientific thought, characterized by Bacon’s clear sense of ordering and classification. Novum organum (1620; English translation, 1802), published in the same year, contains Bacon’s argument for a “new logic,” the discovery of a finite number of “natures” or “forms” lying at the base of the natural world, and an exhaustive description of natural history.

After he had reached the zenith of his power, Bacon’s fall came when old enemies charged him with bribery; he admitted to the charges since he indeed not only had taken gifts from suitors, which was more generally acceptable, but also had accepted donations from individuals whose cases were pending with him as their judge (and in which he often decided against them despite the offerings given). Bacon resigned from his office, was fined forty thousand pounds, was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, and was banished from the court. He made slow progress at rehabilitation, but at the time of his death in the house of Sir Arundel in 1626, he had not yet received full royal pardon from the new king, Charles II.

Significance

Although his public fall from grace as a result of misconduct in office linked Bacon to his literary model Seneca, who showed similar excellence in thought and corruption in public life, the British naturalist and statesman must be remembered for his new, practical approach toward the natural environment; his proposed outlook at science bears the seeds of modern scientific thought.

In his last, unfinished work, New Atlantis , posthumously published in 1627, Bacon argues that there is no conflict between the free pursuit of scientific exploration and the dogmas of the Christian religion. He sums up the ancient Hebrew view of the natural world as there to use and explore rather than as the manifestation of sundry natural deities, and he connects this thought to the idea that scientific research is ultimately undertaken so that God (the final spiritual authority) “might have the more glory” in the “workmanship” of the scientists and men “the more fruit” in the “use” of their discoveries.

On a final note, Bacon’s idea, in the utopian New Atlantis, for an organization dedicated to the free pursuit of all natural sciences that would collect and display its findings in central “houses,” has been realized in the British Royal Society and the British Museum, two institutions that, founded in the spirit of Bacon, are thriving today.

Bacon’s Major Works

1597

• Essayes (rev. 1612, 1625)

1601

• A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert, Late Earle of Essex

1605

• The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane (rev. 1623; best known as Advancement of Learning)

1609

• De Sapientia Veterum (The Wisdom of the Ancients, 1619)

1620

• Novum Organum (English translation, 1802)

1620

• Instauratio Magna (The Great Instauration, 1653)

1622

• Historia Ventorum (History of Winds, 1653)

1622

• The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh

1623

• Historia Vitae et Mortis (History of Life and Death, 1638)

1625

• The Translation of Certaine Psalmes into English Verse

1627

• Sylva Sylvarum

1627

• New Atlantis

1653

• Valerius Terminus (View of Form, 1734)

Bibliography

Anderson, Fulton H. Francis Bacon: His Career and His Thought. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1962. Based on a series of lectures, this work attempts to link Bacon’s philosophy with his politics and to relate his thought to contemporary problems.

Anderson, Fulton H. The Philosophy of Francis Bacon. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Influential book revealing Bacon’s thoughts primarily through his own words. Somewhat dry and overinclusive, it makes up for the lack of critical discussion with its useful compilation of primary texts.

Bacon, Francis. The Works, the Letters, and the Life of Francis Bacon. Edited by James Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, 14 vols. London: Longmans, 1857-1874. Includes William Rawley’s The Life of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon (1657). Still the authoritative, standard edition of Bacon’s complete work. Detailed biography with an impressive collection of primary sources such as Bacon’s letters and notes. The standard against which all later works have to be judged.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963. Enjoyable biography that brings Bacon alive while not neglecting scholarly accuracy. Careful and perceptive; Bowen’s favorable portrait forgives Bacon almost everything but his coldness toward women.

Bozeman, Theodore Dwight. Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Traces the roots of modern fundamentalism to the antebellum Presbyterians, who used Bacon’s idea to prove themselves right and all their pre-Darwinian opponents wrong. An interesting contribution to the history of ideas.

Eiseley, Loren. Francis Bacon and the Modern Dilemma. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963. Slim booklet emphasizing Bacon’s achievements as a scientist; does not account for his deficient understanding of mathematics. Eiseley stresses Bacon’s view of an integrated, responsible science.

Farrington, Benjamin. The Philosophy of Francis Bacon. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1964. Valuable discussion of Bacon’s philosophical ideas; Farrington includes a fine translation of Bacon’s minor Latin works and thus makes them accessible to a broader audience.

Fuller, Jean Overton. Sir Francis Bacon. London: East-West Press, 1981. Ingeniously relates events in Bacon’s life to contemporaneous passages from Shakespeare’s work. Lavishly produced reiteration of the generally discredited theory that Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s oeuvre.

Gaukroger, Stephen. Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Important study of Bacon’s attempt to turn the private, esoteric practice of philosophy into a publically performed and evaluated discipline, thereby changing the history of ideas. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Henry, John. Knowledge Is Power: How Magic, the Government, and an Apocalyptic Vision Inspired Francis Bacon to Create Modern Science. Cambridge, England: Icon, 2004. Explores Bacon’s role in the development of scientific methodology, his legacy, and the events and forces influencing his accomplishments.

Rossi, Paolo. Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science. Translated by Sacha Rabinovitch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Examines the European magical and alchemical tradition of science that Bacon rejected. Important bibliography.