Francis Bacon
Knowledge is power: observe and experiment.
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626, England) : empiricism. To know nature, it is not enough to reason in one's head, nor to pile up observations: a method is needed. Bacon first lists the errors that lie in wait for every human mind, the "idols". On AskPhilosophy: 4 reconstructed arguments, 5 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 4 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He gave modern science its programme: observe, experiment, distrust one's own biases, look for the cases that contradict, and put knowledge at everyone's service. The Royal Society of London (1660) claimed him as its model, Diderot and d'Alembert took over his classification of knowledge in the Encyclopédie, and Kant put a sentence of Bacon's at the head of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787).
His times
A lawyer and politician under Elizabeth I and then James I, he became Lord Chancellor in 1618. In 1621 he was convicted of accepting gifts from litigants and left public life. He devoted his last years to his books. His great project, the "Great Instauration" of the sciences, remained unfinished: the Novum Organum breaks off in the middle of Book II.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceA declared believer: he would rather believe all the fables than that the universe is without a mind. For him, deep philosophy brings us back to God. But he refuses to mix science and the Bible.
Everything starts from the senses and particular facts, and one rises slowly to principles. But he is no pure empiricist: like the bee, the mind must transform what it gathers. He wants an alliance of experience and reason.
He distrusts the mind left to itself, but he is no sceptic: properly conducted, induction should yield knowledge that is "solid and true and well defined".
He does not address the question in the texts of our corpus. Elsewhere (De augmentis, 1623, not collected), he distinguishes a sensitive, bodily soul from a rational soul that comes from God.
No clear position in our texts. He mostly stresses what weighs on judgement: passions, will, habits.
Goodness, willing the good of men, is the greatest of virtues and "the character of the Deity". The good is therefore not a mere human convention.
Harmony through separation: we must "give to faith that only which is faith's" and not look for physics in Genesis. Science studies secondary causes; pursued in depth, it leads back to religion.
The inquiry of truth is "the sovereign good of human nature", and humanity must recover the right over nature that God gave it, for the good of all.
Two sides: the inclination to goodness is "imprinted deeply" in man, but his mind is a distorting mirror, full of idols. Man can improve through method and habit.
A servant of the monarchy: the king is "God's vicegerent". His Essays advise princes on preventing seditions, notably by keeping money from gathering in few hands.
His Essays speak of character and virtues, at the top of which he puts goodness, that is, charity. But when he judges inventions, he mostly counts their effects: the good done to the whole human race.