Death
On 9 April 1626, Bacon died of pneumonia at Highgate outside
London, specifically at Arundel House, a country residence of his friend the
Earl of Arundel, though Arundel was then imprisoned in the Tower of London. An
influential account of the circumstances of his death was given by John
Aubrey's Brief Lives. Aubrey's vivid account, which he says was told to him by "Mr.
Hobbs" (Thomas Hobbes), portrays Bacon as a martyr to experimental
scientific method. It has him journeying to High-gate through the snow with the
King's physician when he is suddenly inspired by the possibility that "flesh
[meat] might not be preserved in snow, as in Salt":
They were resolved; they would try the Experiment
presently. They alighted out of the Coach and went into a poore woman's howse
at the bottome of Highgate-hill, and bought a Hen, and made the woman
exenterate it.
The Snow so chilled him, that he immediately fell so
extremely ill, that he could not returne to his lodging ... but went to the
Earle of Arundell's house at High-gate, where they putt him into ... a damp bed
that had not been layn-in about a yeare before... which gave him such a cold
that in two or three dayes, as I remember he [Hobbes] told me, he dyed of
Suffocation.
Aubrey has been criticized for his evident credulousness in
this and other works; on the other hand, he knew Thomas Hobbes, Bacon's fellow
philosopher and friend. Being unwittingly on his deathbed, the philosopher
dictated his last letter to the Earl:
My very good Lord, – I was likely to have had the fortune of
Caius Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the
burning of Mount Vesuvius; for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two
touching the conservation and in-duration of bodies. As for the experiment
itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and
High-gate, I was taken with such a fit of casting as I know not whether it was
the Stone, or some surfeit or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But
when I came to your Lordship's House, I was not able to go back, and therefore
was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful
and diligent about me, which I assure myself your Lordship will not only pardon
towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your Lordship's
House was happy to me, and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am
sure you give me to it. I know how unfit it is for me to write with any other
hand than mine own, but by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with sickness
that I cannot steadily hold a pen.
Another account appears in a biography by William Rawley,
Bacon's personal secretary and chaplain:
He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in
the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Savior's resurrection, in
the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate,
near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so
ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied
with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his
breast, that he died by suffocation.
He was buried in St Michael's Church in St Albans. At the
news of his death, over 30 great minds collected together their eulogies of
him, which were then later published in Latin. He left personal assets of about
£7,000 and lands that realized £6,000 when sold. His debts amounted to more
than £23,000, equivalent to more than £4m at current value.
Philosophy and works
Francis Bacon's philosophy is displayed in the vast and
varied writings he left, which might be divided into three great branches:
Scientific works in which his ideas for a universal reform
of knowledge into scientific methodology and the improvement of mankind's state
using the Scientific method are presented.
Religious and literary works in which he presents his moral
philosophy and theological meditations.
Juridical works in which his reforms in English law are
proposed.
Influence and legacy
Science
Bacon's seminal work, the Novum Organum, was highly
influential in the 17th century among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas
Browne, who in his encyclopedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–72) frequently
adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries. This book entails
the basis of the scientific method as a means of observation and induction. Also,
Robert Hooke was highly influenced by Bacon, using Baconian language and ideas
in his book, "Micrographia."
According to Bacon, learning and knowledge all derive from
inductive reasoning. Through his belief in experimentally-derived data, he theorized
that all the knowledge that was necessary to fully understand a concept could
be attained using induction. "Induction" in this context can
be thought of as "reasoning from evidence," as opposed to "deduction,"
or "top-down reasoning," which can be thought of as "reasoning
from a pre-existing premise, or hypothesis." To get to the point of an
inductive conclusion, one must consider the importance of observing the
particulars (specific parts of nature). "Once these particulars have
been gathered together, the interpretation of Nature proceeds by sorting them
into a formal arrangement so that they may be presented to the
understanding." Experimentation is essential to discovering the truths
of Nature. When an experiment happens, the data is used to form a result and a conclusion.
Note that this process does not involve a pre-existing hypothesis. On the
contrary, inductive reasoning starts with data, not a prior premise or
hypothesis. Through this conclusion of particulars, an understanding of Nature
can be formed. Now that an understanding of Nature has been arrived at, an
inductive conclusion can be drawn. "There are and can be only two ways
of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and
particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of
which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the
discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives
axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken
ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the
true way, but as yet untried." (Bacon's axiom XIX from the Novum
Organum)
Bacon explains how we come to this understanding and
knowledge because of this process in comprehending the complexities of nature. "Bacon
sees nature as an extremely subtle complexity, which affords all the energy of
the natural philosopher to disclose her secrets." Bacon described the
evidence and proof revealed through taking a specific example from nature and
expanding that example into a general, substantial claim of nature. Once we
understand the particulars in nature, we can learn more about it and become
surer of things occurring in nature, gaining knowledge and obtaining new
information all the while. "It is nothing less than a revival of
Bacon's supremely confident belief that inductive methods can provide us with
ultimate and infallible answers concerning the laws and nature of the universe,"
Bacon states. When we come to understand parts of nature, we can eventually
understand nature better as a whole because of induction. Because of this,
Bacon concludes that all learning and knowledge must be drawn from inductive
reasoning.
During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a
guiding spirit of the Royal Society, founded under Charles II in 1660. During
the 18th-century French Enlightenment, Bacon's non-metaphysical approach to
science became more influential than the dualism of his French contemporary
Descartes, and was associated with criticism of the Ancien Régime. In 1733,
Voltaire introduced him to a French audience as the "father"
of the scientific method, an understanding which had become widespread by the
1750s. In the 19th century, his emphasis on induction was revived and developed
by William Whewell, among others. He has been reputed as the "Father of
Experimental Philosophy".
He also wrote a long treatise on Medicine, History of Life
and Death, with natural and experimental observations for the prolongation of
life.
One of his biographers, the historian William Hepworth
Dixon, states: "Bacon's influence in the modern world is so great that
every man who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits
in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner,
enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation, owes him
something."
In 1902, Hugo von Hofmannsthal published a fictional letter,
known as The Lord Chandos Letter, addressed to Bacon and dated 1603, about a
writer who is experiencing a crisis of language.
North America
Bacon played a leading role in establishing the British
colonies in North America, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. His government report on "The
Virginia Colony" was submitted in 1609. In 1610, Bacon and his
associates received a charter from the king to form the Treasurer and the
Companye of Adventurers and planter of the Cittye of London and Bristoll for
the Collonye or plantacon in Newfoundland, and sent John Guy to found a colony
there. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, wrote: "Bacon,
Locke, and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever
lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those
superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral
sciences".
In 1910, Newfoundland issued a postage stamp to commemorate
Bacon's role in establishing the colony. The stamp describes Bacon as "the
guiding spirit in Colonization Schemes in 1610". Moreover, some
scholars believe he was largely responsible for the drafting, in 1609 and 1612,
of two charters of government for the Virginia Colony. William Hepworth Dixon
considered that Bacon's name could be included in the list of Founders of the
United States.
Law
Although few of his proposals for law reform were adopted
during his lifetime, Bacon's legal legacy was considered by the magazine New
Scientist in 1961 as having influenced the drafting of the Napoleonic Code as
well as the law reforms introduced by 19th-century British Prime Minister Sir
Robert Peel. The historian William Hepworth Dixon referred to the Napoleonic
Code as "the sole embodiment of Bacon's thought", saying that
Bacon's legal work "has had more success abroad than it has found at
home" and that in France, "it has blossomed and come into
fruit".
Harvey Wheeler attributed to Bacon, in Francis Bacon's
Verulamium – the Common Law Template of The Modern in English Science and
Culture, the creation of these distinguishing features of the modern common law
system:
using cases as repositories of evidence about the
"unwritten law";
determining the relevance of precedents by exclusionary
principles of evidence and logic;
treating opposing legal briefs as adversarial hypotheses
about the application of the "unwritten law" to a new set of facts.
As late as the 18th century, some juries still declared
the law rather than the facts, but already before the end of the 17th century,
Sir Matthew Hale explained modern common law adjudication procedure and
acknowledged Bacon as the inventor of the process of discovering unwritten laws
from the evidences of their applications. The method combined empiricism and
inductivism in a new way that was to imprint its signature on many of the
distinctive features of modern English society. Paul H. Kocher writes that
Bacon is considered by some jurists to be the father of modern Jurisprudence.
Bacon is commemorated with a statue in Gray's Inn, South
Square in London, where he received his legal training, and where he was
elected Treasurer of the Inn in 1608.
More recent scholarship on Bacon's jurisprudence has focused
on his advocating torture as a legal recourse for the crown. Bacon himself was
not a stranger to the torture chamber; in his various legal capacities in both
Elizabeth I's and James I's reigns, Bacon was listed as a commissioner on five
torture warrants. In 1613(?), in a letter addressed to King James I on the question
of torture's place within English law, Bacon identifies the scope of torture as
a means to further the investigation of threats to the state: "In the
cases of treasons, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence."
For Bacon, torture was not a punitive measure, an intended form of state
repression, but instead offered a modus operandi for the government agent
tasked with uncovering acts of treason.
Organization of knowledge
Francis Bacon developed the idea that a classification of
knowledge must be universal while handling all possible resources. In his
progressive view, humanity would be better if access to educational resources
were provided to the public, hence the need to organize them. His approach to
learning reshaped the Western view of knowledge theory from an individual to a
social interest.
The original classification proposed by Bacon organized all
types of knowledge into three general groups: history, poetry, and philosophy.
He did that based on his understanding of how information is processed: memory,
imagination, and reason, respectively. His methodical approach to the
categorization of knowledge goes hand-in-hand with his principles of scientific
methods. Bacon's writings were the starting point for William Torrey Harris's
classification system for libraries in the United States by the second half of
the 1800s.
The phrase "scientia potentia est" (or "scientia
est potentia"), meaning "knowledge is power", is
commonly attributed to Bacon: the expression "ipsa scientia potestas
est" ("knowledge itself is power") occurs in his
Meditationes Sacrae (1597).
Historical debates
Bacon and Shakespeare
The Baconian hypothesis of Shakespearean authorship, first
proposed in the mid-19th century, contends that Francis Bacon wrote some or
even all of the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
Occult theories
Francis Bacon often gathered with the men at Gray's Inn to
discuss politics and philosophy, and to try out various theatrical scenes that
he had written. Bacon's alleged connection to the Rosicrucians and the
Freemasons has been widely discussed by authors and scholars in many books.
However, others, including Daphne du Maurier in her biography of Bacon, have
argued that there is no substantive evidence to support claims of involvement
with the Rosicrucians. Frances Yates does not claim that Bacon was a
Rosicrucian, but presents evidence that he was nevertheless involved in some of
the more closed intellectual movements of his day. She argues that Bacon's
movement for the advancement of learning was closely connected with the German
Rosicrucian movement, while Bacon's New Atlantis portrays a land ruled by
Rosicrucians. He apparently saw his own movement for the advancement of
learning to conform with Rosicrucian ideals.
The link between Bacon's work and the Rosicrucians' ideals
which Yates allegedly found was the conformity of the purposes expressed by the
Rosicrucian Manifestos and Bacon's plan of a "Great Instauration",
for the two were calling for a reformation of both "divine and human
understanding", as well as both, had in view the purpose of mankind's
return to the "state before the Fall".
Another major link is said to be the resemblance between
Bacon's New Atlantis and the German Rosicrucian Johann Valentin Andreae's
Description of the Republic of Christianopolis (1619). Andreae describes a
utopic island in which Christian theosophy and applied science ruled, and in
which the spiritual fulfilment and intellectual activity constituted the
primary goals of each individual, the scientific pursuits being the highest
intellectual calling – linked to the achievement of spiritual perfection.
Andreae's island also depicts a great advancement in technology, with many
industries separated in different zones that supplied the population's needs,
which shows great resemblance to Bacon's scientific methods and purposes.
While rejecting occult conspiracy theories surrounding Bacon
and the claim Bacon personally identified as a Rosicrucian, intellectual
historian Paolo Rossi has argued for an occult influence on Bacon's scientific
and religious writing. He argues that Bacon was familiar with early modern
alchemical texts and that Bacon's ideas about the application of science had
roots in Renaissance magical ideas about science and magic, facilitating
humanity's domination of nature. Rossi further interprets Bacon's search for
hidden meanings in myth and fables in such texts as The Wisdom of the Ancients
as succeeding earlier occultist and Neoplatonic attempts to locate hidden
wisdom in pre-Christian myths. As indicated by the title of his study, however,
Rossi claims Bacon ultimately rejected the philosophical foundations of
occultism as he came to develop a form of modern science.
Rossi's analysis and claims have been extended by Jason
Josephson-Storm in his study, The Myth of Disenchantment. Josephson-Storm also
rejects conspiracy theories surrounding Bacon and does not claim that Bacon was
an active Rosicrucian. However, he argues that Bacon's "rejection"
of magic actually constituted an attempt to purify magic of Catholic, demonic,
and esoteric influences and to establish magic as a field of study and
application paralleling Bacon's vision of science. Furthermore, Josephson-Storm
argues that Bacon drew on magical ideas when developing his experimental
method. Josephson-Storm finds evidence that Bacon considered nature a living
entity, populated by spirits, and argues that Bacon's views on the human
domination and application of nature actually depend on his spiritualism and
personification of nature.
Bacon's influence can also be seen on a variety of religious
and spiritual authors, and on groups that have utilized his writings in their
own belief systems.
Works
Some of the more notable works by Bacon are:
Essays
1st edition with 10 essays (1597)
2nd edition with 38 essays (1612)
3rd/final edition with 58 essays (1625)
The Advancement and Proficience of Learning Divine and Human
(1605)
Instauratio magna (The Great Instauration) (1620) – a
multi-part work including Distributio operis (Plan of the Work); Novum Organum
(The New Organon); Parasceve ad historiam naturalem (Preparatory for Natural
History) and Catalogus historiarum particularium (Catalogue of Particular
Histories)
De augmentis scientiarum (1623) – an enlargement of The
Advancement of Learning translated into Latin
New Atlantis (1626)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon
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