Title: Francis Bacon,Modern & Post-Modern Science
'Modern' science is a protestant conversation with the world.
'Post-modern' science is a multi-faith conversation with the world.
Harry
http://www.strangescience.net/bacon.htm
Francis Bacon
Born in 1561, Francis Bacon was neither a paleontologist nor a
biologist. He couldn't even be called a scientist considering the term
didn't exist yet. Still, Bacon influenced all of science, once proclaiming,
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
In the centuries leading up to Bacon's birth, human knowledge depended
heavily on divine philosophy and Aristotelian logic. Bacon advocated a
completely new approach in which human knowledge would be empirically built
upon observation and experimentation. Bacon's aim was help mankind master
nature through discovery and invention. He discouraged scholars and savants
from reaching conclusions too quickly, and urged them to gather as many
facts as possible. Succeeding generations of Baconian scientists turned away
from discerning divine intentions in nature's creations. For better or
worse, they instead looked for nature's utility to man. Yet Bacon was not a
scientist in the completely modern sense; he was a product of a deeply
religious society, and believed that the study of nature would restore Man
to the powers he had before the Biblical fall from grace:
For man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and
from his dominion over Creation. Both of these losses however can even in
this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the
latter by arts and sciences.
The Protestant Bacon also likened Aristotle � a pagan and, worse, a pagan
whose teachings had been supported by the Catholic Church � to the
Antichrist.
This most influential of philosophers lived such a dicotomous existence that
historians occasionally wondered whether they were studying the same person.
Though he was the son of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Bacon
inherited no real fortune, and spent his life plagued by debt, a problem not
helped by his extravagant tastes. Trying to make a comfortable living, he
spent much of his life caught up in court intrigue, currying favor with
patrons who often had vitriolic differences with each other. He was arguably
not the most loyal friend anyone ever had � a prot�g� of the Earl of Essex,
Bacon eventually played a role in the earl's prosecution for treason.
Ironically, Bacon's own reputation suffered in the affair, and he never
fully regained the confidence of Queen Elizabeth after the earl was
executed, though his prospects improved considerably under the reign of King
James I. (Though he tried for years, however, Bacon never succeeded in
persuading either monarch to establish institutions such as zoos, botanical
gardens or laboratories.) What is not surprising about Bacon was that he was
both a scholar and a government official � he advocated state control of
science and condemned "intellectual individualists."
Bacon published The Advancement of Learning in 1605 and his magnum opus
Novum Organum in 1620. One of his most popular writings, however, was a
utopian work, New Atlantis, describing a national scientific institution
called Solomon's House. Subsequent scientists devoted themselves to
realizing Bacon's vision, and Solomon's House influenced the later formation
of the Royal Society of London.
In 1621, Bacon was made Viscount St. Alban's. Later that year, he was
charged with accepting bribes as Lord Chancellor, stripped of his viscount
status, and even briefly imprisoned. Whether Bacon was truly guilty could be
debated considering the people who charged him with corruption were mostly
angered that he had ruled against them after accepting their gifts. After
his disgrace, he devoted the last years of his life to posterity. He
polished his earlier writings for publication and compared himself to
Demosthenes, Seneca and Cicero, classical authors who had also fallen from
grace. Bacon died in 1626, reportedly from a catching a chill during an
outdoor experiment, trying to see whether cold could delay putrefaction.
