Francis Bacon

Who Was Francis Bacon?

Francis Bacon was the philosopher who gave the modern world its method — the man who, more than any other single figure, articulated the principles of empirical induction that would become the foundation of modern science. Born in London to a prominent family, educated at Trinity College Cambridge and Gray’s Inn, he rose to become Lord Chancellor of England before his fall from power in 1621 on charges of accepting bribes. He spent his remaining years writing the philosophical works that would outlast his political disgrace.

Bacon’s great project was the reform of human knowledge — the clearing away of what he called the “idols” of the mind and the replacement of scholastic speculation with careful observation and systematic experiment. His Novum Organum (1620) laid out this method with programmatic clarity, and his unfinished New Atlantis (1627) imagined a utopian society organized around scientific inquiry — a vision that prefigures both the Royal Society and the entire institution of modern research science.

Bacon presents a fascinating case for TLA. He was not an atheist — he believed in God and Providence — but his method systematically bracketed theological considerations from the pursuit of natural knowledge. The separation he introduced between the book of Scripture and the book of nature is one of the foundational moves of the modern secular order.

In Their Own Words

Selected Bibliography

• Essays — 1597, expanded 1625
• The Advancement of Learning — 1605
• Novum Organum — 1620
• New Atlantis — 1627 — posthumous