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 prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
“Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.”
“The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.”
“Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.”
“A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no time. ”
“For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble.”
“В гнева си глупаците имат остър език, но от това не стават по-богати”
“There was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.”
“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.”
“A Man must make his opportunity,as oft as find it ”
“The way of fortune, is like the Milken Way in the sky; which is a meeting or knot of a number of small stars; not seen asunder, but giving light together.”
“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”
“If a man is gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world.”
“If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted”
“Solomon saith, 'He that considereth the wind, shall not sow, and he that looketh to the clouds, shall not reap.' A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.”
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”
“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.”
“Silence is the virtue of fools.”
“Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure”
“Wonder is the seed of knowledge”
“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”
“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”
“Constancy is the foundation of virtues”
“There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”
“Ipsa scientia potestas est.Knowledge itself is power.”
“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
“He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.”
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.”
“Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”
“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”
“To conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficience in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.”
“Kebijaksanaan dalam berbicara lebih berharga daripada kefasihan.”
“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
“It is impossible to love and be wise.”
“Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
“The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.”
“What then remains, but that we still should cryNot to be born, or being born, to die?”
“The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.”
“Jika kita memulainya dengan kepastian, kita akan berakhir dengan keraguan,tetapi jika memulainya dengan keraguan, dan bersabar menghadapinya, kita akan berakhir dengan kepastian”
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
“This communicating of a Man's Selfe to his Frend works two contrarie effects; for it re-doubleth Joys, and cutteth Griefs in halves.”
“To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.”
“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
“For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.”
“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”