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Francis Bacon (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the most important philosophers of the early modern period. He was a truly protean figure—a lawyer by training and profession who advocated law reform for over thirty years; a politician and statesman who sat in parliament from the age of twenty until the age of sixty; a popular essayist and historian whose Essays were printed more than twenty times and The Historie of the Raigne of King Henrie the Seuenth (1622) at least six times in the seventeenth century. But before everything else, Bacon was a philosopher who had a profound impact on the subsequent development of philosophy. The main endeavor of his philosophical pursuits was creating a colossal program for renewing all knowledge, especially natural philosophy. Bacon called this program “Instauratio magna” (“Great Instauration”). It included a completely new aim for natural philosophy and sciences. All knowledge, rather than being only speculative and contemplative, should also be operative and

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