Sir Francis Bacon (1551-1626)
and
Baconian Science
 

• born to priviledge
• entered Cambridge at age 12
• described tutors as "men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells [with] Aristotle, their dictator"
• rose to become Lord Chancellor of England
• thought, by some, to be author of Shakespeare's plays

• in Novum Organon (1620),
• presented clearly (but didn't invent) idea that experiment and research are the sole bases of science and philosophy
• delineates principles of the inductive scientific method
• the only knowledge of importance is empirically rooted in the natural world
• a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man's mastery over the world
• "Knowledge is power"
"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: 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."