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|Brief=a British natural philosopher and founder of experimentalism and empirical science.
|Summary=Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount of St. Alban (January 22, 1561 – April 9, 1626) was a prominent figure in English society, making significant contributions to the world as a philosopher, scientist, statesman, juror, orator, author, attorney general, and lord chancellor of England. Perhaps his most significant, lasting impact was in natural philosophy and the role he played during the scientific revolution (the period between the publications of Copernicus’s Revolutions and Newton’s Principia). In the later part of his life, he worked to establish empiricism and constructed his scientific methodology, first introduced in his revolutionary text Novum Organum, describing his reformulation of scientific thinking that employs inductive reasoning to make predictions about the world.
|Historical Context=Bacon began his studies at Cambridge University’s Trinity College in 1573 at the age of twelve.[[CiteRef::Jones (1868)]] While there, he became dissatisfied with the tradition of Aristotelian philosophy and deemed it unfruitful.[[CiteRef::Marguerite Lea and Quiton Quinton (2017)]][[CiteRef::Klein (2016)]][[CiteRef::Lovejoy (1888)]] Bacon lived during the beginning of the scientific revolution, shortly after the publication of Copernicus’s Revolutions and thus would have likely been influenced by the new heliocentric cosmology that was beginning to take root, which brought the validity of the Aristotelian mosaic into question.[[CiteRef::Peltonen (2006)]] During this time, the study of empirical natural philosophy, which set the foundations upon which modern scientific practices and methodologies were based, took its form. During this era, there was a major revolution wherein many elements of the earlier mosaic were replaced. Bacon’s early education occurred at the very beginning of this revolution, putting him in the ideal context to revolutionize how science was carried out.
At the time of Bacon’s education, there were three central ideas that defined the worldview of the time; Aristotelian scholasticism, scholarly and aesthetic humanism, and occultism.[[CiteRef::Marguerite Lea and Quiton Quinton (2017)]] The tradition of Aristotelian scholasticism formed the scientific mosaic at the time of Bacon’s education and this mosaic included such theories as astrology and alchemy and the methodology employed during that era was one that demarcated scientific theories by their ability to describe the world intuitively. The prevalent renaissance humanism of the time brought many thinkers back to the ancient traditions of the Greeks, putting an emphasis on critical, evidenced-based discussion rather than dogmatism. This setting allowed the academic air of the time to be such that Bacon’s normative methodology could be well-received and eventually accepted by the scientific community. The influences of occult thinking at the time lead people to believe that not all that is real is physical and so the spiritual world was equally as important as the physical world.
One theory that played a major role in Bacon’s life was atomism; the subjects of alchemy and magic that were the standard modes of inquiry into physical substance dissatisfied him greatly as they did not have any reproducible, standard way to probe nature, and observe its phenomena.[[CiteRef::Klein (2016)]] For this reason, he found atomism, particularly the early atomism of Democritus, to be quite compelling as it is founded in empirical notions, and then general results and claims are derived from these observations. At the time of Bacon, atomism was championed by the Copernicans as it was allowable within their heliocentric model, and incompatible with the Aristotelian model. It fit with the new, developing science, while contradicting the older thinking.
During his lifetime, Bacon bore witness to many of the great discoveries that defined the science of his era and that would later shape the nature of scientific thought. In particular, he was alive when Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion, and also when Galileo published the first telescopic observations. Such events were of great importance to the academic community of the time and as such, would have had a great impact on Bacon and how he perceived the state of science in his time. In fact, the acceptance of Kepler’s laws, and of Galileo’s observations directly contradicted the foundations of Aristotelian geocentric cosmology and therefore, with these new ideas being proliferated, there was a general stance that perhaps science would need to be reformulated. It was this reformulation that Bacon sought to carry out from early in his studies, although he did not publish any material on the subject until much later in his life.
Following his studies, Bacon pursued a legal career in the court where he held a variety of roles and eventually pursued political endeavours, eventually sitting as a member of Parliament.[[CiteRef::Jones (1868)]][[CiteRef::Lovejoy (1888)]] However, in 1621, several of Bacon’s enemies had him convicted of bribery and he was, among other things, was banned from ever holding a state position again.[[CiteRef::Marguerite Lea and Quiton Quinton (2017)]][[CiteRef::Jones (1868)]][[CiteRef::Lovejoy (1888)]]
No longer able to pursue a state position, Bacon resigned himself to intellectual endeavours for the remaining years of his life and it is during this period that he made his significant contributions to natural philosophy, having already spent decades refining his intellect and critical thinking in the courts and in politics.[[CiteRef::Lovejoy (1888)]] In 1620, shortly before his political downfall, Bacon published his Novum Organum, where he sought to supply “true directions concerning the interpretation of nature”.[[CiteRef::Bacon (1878)]] In this text, Bacon makes a normative suggestion as to how the methodology should be revised from the Aristotelian methodology to the first empirical methodology. A variation of the inductive, empirical methodology that he introduced was eventually adopted by all natural philosophers that immediately succeeded him, such as Descartes and Newton.
