Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, QC (1560-1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, essayist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. 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 (being the first scientist to receive a knighthood), and created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621.
Bacon's ideas were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas Browne, who in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–72) frequently adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries. 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 René Descartes, and was associated with criticism of the ancien regime. In 1733 Voltaire "introduced him as the "father" of the scientific method" to a French audience, an understanding which had become widespread by 1750. 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 Science".
Bacon is also considered because of his introduction of science in England to be the philosophical influence behind the dawning of the Industrial age. In his works, Bacon stated "the explanation of which things, and of the true relation between the nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing and decoration of the bridal chamber of the mind and the universe, out of which marriage let us hope there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity" meaning he hoped that through the understanding of mechanics using the Scientific Method, society will create more mechanical inventions that will to an extent solve the problems of Man. This changed the course of science in history, from a experimental state, as it was found in medieval ages, to an experimental and inventive state – that would have eventually led to the mechanical inventions that made possible the Industrial Revolutions of the following centuries.
He also wrote a long treatise on Medicine, History of Life and Death, with natural and experimental observations for the prolongation of life.
For one of his biographers, the historian William Hepworth Dixon, Bacon's influence in 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.
Francis Bacon's philosophy is displayed in the vast and varied writings he left, which might be divided in three great branches:
Scientific works – in which his ideas for an universal reform of knowledge into scientific methodology and the improvement of mankind's state using the Scientific method are presented.
Literary works – in which he presents his moral philosophy.
Juridical works – in which his reforms in English Law are proposed.
“A la naturaleza se le domina obedeciendola.”
“sejarah menjadikan orang bijaksana, puisi menjadikan orang fasih lidah, matematika menjadikan orang cerdik, filsafat menyebabkan orang berpikir dalam, moral menjadikan orang bersikap sungguh-sungguh, logika dan ilmu berpidato menjadikan orang berani mengeluarkan pendapat.”
“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
“Whoseoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment.”
“If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.”
“The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the image of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that they have no posterity.”
“Nothing is so mischievous as the apotheosis of error.”
“Let every student of nature take this as a rule,-- that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.”
“I would address one general admonition to all, that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferior things, but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from lust of power that the Angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell, but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man come in danger by it.”
“A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.”
“Revenge is a king of wild justice.”
“by indignities men come to dignities”
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”
“Existence is in a way so banal, you may as well try and make a kind of grandeur of it”
“The true atheist is he whose hands are cauterized by holy things.”
“Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils”
“Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other”
“A small task if it be really daily will beat the efforts of a spasmodic Hercules.”
“For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”
“I will never be an old man. To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.”
“Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.”
“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”
“The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude.”
“Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
“There Are But Two Tragedies in Life-One is One's Inability to attain One's Heart's Desire-The Other Is To Have It!”
“This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.”
“Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.”
“Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.”
“By far the best proof is experience.”
“Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.”
“The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.”
“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. ”
“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”
“People of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.”
“There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.”
“But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.”
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
“Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”
“Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game”
“There are two ways of spreading light..to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
“Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”
“Se venger, c'est se mettre au niveau de l'ennemi; pardonner, c'est le dépasser.”
“It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.”
“The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.”
“Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.”
“The only really interesting thing iswhat happens between two people in a room.”
“Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.”
“La lectura hace al hombre completo; la conversación, ágil, y el escribir, preciso”.”
“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”