His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. In the context of his time such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy.
Nevertheless, his demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Alban in 1621; without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He has been credited as the creator of the English essay.
Early life
Francis Bacon was born at York House, Strand, London. He was the youngest of five sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I. His mother, Ann Cooke Bacon, was the second wife of Sir Nicholas. She was a member of the Reformed or Puritan Church, and a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her sister married William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the chief minister of Queen Elizabeth I.
Biographers believe that Bacon received an education at home in his early years, and that his health during that time, as later, was delicate. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 at the age of twelve, living for three years there with his older brother Anthony.
At Cambridge he first met the Queen, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to call him "the young Lord Keeper".
There also his studies of science brought him to the conclusion that the methods (and thus the results) were erroneous. His reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his dislike of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him barren, disputatious, and wrong in its objectives.
Works and philosophy
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations. He published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna, the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (published 1620). Bacon also wrote the Astrologia Sana and expressed his belief that stars had physical effects on the planet. He is also known for The New Atlantis, a utopian novel he wrote in 1626.
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy; he wrote that, whilst philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law. Before beginning this induction, the inquirer is to free his mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. These are called "Idols"[9] (idola), and are of four kinds: "Idols of the Tribe" (idola tribus), which are common to the race; "Idols of the Den" (idola specus), which are peculiar to the individual; "Idols of the Marketplace" (idola fori), coming from the misuse of language; and "Idols of the Theatre" (idola theatri), which result from an abuse of authority. The end of induction is the discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which they proceed.
Bacon's somewhat fragmentary ethical system, derived through use of his methods, is explicated in the seventh and eighth books of his De augmentis scientiarum (1623). He distinguishes between duty to the community, an ethical matter, and duty to God, a purely religious matter. Any moral action is the action of the human will, which is governed by reason and spurred on by the passions; habit is what aids men in directing their will toward the good. No universal rules can be made, as both situations and men's characters differ.
Bacon distinctly separated religion and philosophy, though the two can coexist. Where philosophy is based on reason, faith is based on revelation, and therefore irrational — in De augmentis he writes that "the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith." And yet he writes in "The Essays: Of Atheism" that "a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion", suggesting he continued to employ inductive reasoning in all areas of his life, including his own spiritual beliefs.
Bacon contrasted the new approach, of the development of science, with that of the Middle Ages. He once said, to top it all off: "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."
On the three "modern" inventions
In Bacon's work Novum Organum, he cites three world-changing inventions in the West, but does not seem to be aware that they all hail from China.
"Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." - Novum Organum
"For our ordinances and rites we have two very long and fair galleries. In one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies, also the inventor of ships, your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder, the inventor of music, the inventor of letters, the inventor of printing, the inventor of observations of astronomy, the inventor of works in metal, the inventor of glass, the inventor of silk of the worm, the inventor of wine, the inventor of corn and bread, the inventor of sugars; and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Then we have divers inventors of our own, of excellent works; which, since you have not seen) it were too long to make descriptions of them; and besides, in the right understanding of those descriptions you might easily err. For upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honorable reward. These statues are some of brass, some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron, some of silver, some of gold."
Posthumous reputation
Bacon's ideas about the improvement of the human lot were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among a number of Parliamentarian scholars. During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the new-founded Royal Society. In the nineteenth century his emphasis on induction was revived and developed by William Whewell, among others.
Bacon was ranked #90 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
Several authors, such as A .L. Rowse, Rictor Norton, and Alan Stewart, accept the possibility that he had homosexual inclinations. Nieves Mathews, author of Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, argues that the sources are not conclusive :
(1) a quote from the private diary of Simonds D'Ewes (a disputable source since he was Bacon's enemy in Parliament),
(2) a quote from Brief Lives by John Aubrey (written after Bacon's passing): he "was a pederast" and "had ganimeds and favourites",
(3) a note by Ann Bacon in which she expressed disapproval of the friends Francis and Anthony were associating with (since one was a "Papist" and money was owned to her sons).
Francis Bacon in popular culture
Beginning early in the 20th century in the U.S.A., a number of metaphysical organizations, such as the I AM Activity, The Bridge to Freedom, The Temple of The Presence, and various others began making the claim that Francis Bacon had never died. They claimed that soon after completing the "Shake-Speare" plays, he had feigned his own death on Easter Sunday 1626 and then traveled extensively outside of England, eventually attaining his physical Ascension on May 1, 1684 in the region of the Carpathian Mountains. The belief is that Bacon took on the name "Saint Germain" as an Ascended Master, and is now known as "The Chohan of the Seventh Ray of Freedom" for the Earth and, since May 1, 1954, is the Hierarch for the "Dawning Golden Age" in the current two thousand year cycle of the Age of Aquarius. Under the name "Saint Germain", Bacon is considered a central figure in the "Ascended Master Teachings", and they claim that he teaches about "The One" (a Source that is a "Universal All-Pervading Presence of Life"), the "Individualized I AM Presence" (the "Self-Conscious Immortal Identity" of each person streaming from "The One" to the lower matter planes), and complete "Divine Freedom" from all human limitation.
Bacon and Shakespeare
Since the 1800s, many scholars have suggested that Bacon was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Francis Carr has suggested that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and Don Quixote.
One theory based on Bacon's cipher was published by Edward Clark in a late 19th century book called The Tale of the Shakspere Epitaph by Francis Bacon and referred to an inscription on a bust of Shakespeare which used a mixture of letter-shapes. Unfortunately the stone had crumbled and been replaced more than half a century earlier, so Clark had to rely on copies. He was building on an article by Hugh Black in The North American Review suggesting that the inscription concealed the sentence, "FRA BA WRT EAR AY", an abbreviation of "Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays."
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