BIOGRAPHY Francis Bacon

 

Francis Bacon - a well-known philosopher, historian, and politician, stood at the origins of the emergence of empiricism and materialism. He became the first major philosopher of the Late Renaissance and the beginning of the New Age.

It is difficult to say who he was more, a philosopher or a scholar, but there is no doubt that Francis Bacon became the great thinker of the Renaissance in England. Very versatile, and incredibly educated, he changed many jobs, visited several countries, many formulated smart thoughts that have not lost their relevance today. Bacon had incredible oratory skills, which, combined with the desire for knowledge, helped to reform the philosophy of those times. The empiricist Bacon was absolutely certain that the development of civilization is possible only thanks to scientific and technological progress, and he put cultural and spiritual values in second place.

CHILDHOOD

Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, in London, in the mansion of his father’s York house, situated on one of the central streets of the city. The father of the future philosopher was named Nicholas Bacon, he was involved in politics, and his mother, Anna Bacon (before her marriage, Cook), was the daughter of Anthony Cook, a humanist who was directly involved in the upbringing of Edward VI, English, and Irish king.

Francis' first teacher was his mother, who spoke Latin and ancient Greek herself. The boy really liked to study, he showed interest in sciences from a tender age. For two years, Bacon studied at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, then for three years, he was part of the retinue of the British ambassador to France, Sir Amyas Paulet.

After his father died in 1579, the young man was left It was at this time that he started training in law at the barristers' school. Three years later, in 1582, Bacon was already working as a lawyer, in 1584 he entered Parliament, where he served until 1614, participating actively in the work of the House of Commons. From time to time Francis wrote to Elizabeth I, and in his letters, he raised the most pressing political issues of that time.

As time passed, historians agree that if the queen had listened to the philosopher and done as he advised, then several conflicts that involved parliament and the crown could have been avoided. In 1591, Bacon was appointed to the post of adviser to the Earl of Essex, who was the favorite of the Queen herself. Francis immediately set all priorities, he made it clear to the count that he was loyal to his country, and under no circumstances would he change her. Therefore, when in 1601 Essex made an attempt to organize a palace coup, Bacon, as one of the lawyers, took part in the trial against him and advocated recognizing the earl as a traitor.

BACON HAD MANY ILL-WISHERS AMONG THE HIGHER RANKS, WHO SAW HIM AS A RIVAL. IN ADDITION, THE PHILOSOPHER OFTEN EXPRESSED IN WRITING HIS DISSATISFACTION WITH THE POLITICAL SITUATION DURING THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH I, AND THIS COULD NOT BUT AFFECT HER DISPOSITION TOWARDS HIM.

In this state of affairs, there was no issue of any promotion at work. During the reign of the queen, high positions were not "shone" for the lawyer, but after James I Stuart came to power in 1603, significant changes occurred in the biography of the philosopher.

In the same year, he was knighted. Five years later, in 1618, Bacon became Baron Verulamsky, and in 1621, Viscount St. Albans. Then he was charged with taking bribes. Francis did not hide the fact that he received gifts from those people whose cases he is in court However, it is completely denied the fact that receiving a gift affects his final decision. However, Bacon was deprived of all his posts and had no right to be in court.

PHILOSOPHY AND TEACHING

The major literary work of Francis Bacon is a book called "Experiments", which he wrote for 28 years. The author published the first ten essays in 1597, and up to 1625 he collected 58 texts, some of which were included in the third, revised, and augmented edition, called "Experiments, or Instructions moral and political."

The main theme of these works is human life and the aspects of which it consists - love, friendship, conscience, ambition, and vicissitudes of destiny. There were many metaphors and scholarly examples in the works, which will be useful to anyone who aspires to make a career with In the advice given by the philosopher to his contemporaries, cold calculation dominates. Bacon says that everybody who wants to climb high will have to go through the zigzags of a spiral staircase, that close people always become hostages of fate, as they interfere with doing great things, no matter what, good or evil.

In spite of the fact that Francis devoted a lot of time to jurisprudence and politics, he himself considered science and philosophy to be his main occupation. Bacon did not perceive Aristotle's deduction, which was in the main position in those years, he considered it an unsatisfactory way of philosophizing, he worked on the development of a completely new instrument of thinking.

In 1620, the philosopher presented his grand plan for the restoration of the sciences, which appeared as a preface to the book "New Oregon, or True Directions for Interpretation." This work was to consist of six sections - the current state of science, a new method of obtaining true knowledge, experimental data, issues that need to be further investigated, a set of preliminary decisions, and, in fact, philosophy.

Francis to sketch out only the first two parts. The author called the first one "On the Usefulness and Success of Knowledge", in Latin, it was called "On the Dignity and Multiplication of Sciences".

Bacon's philosophy is based on the existence of "idols" which influence human knowledge. Therefore, he dedicated the second part of his project to describe the principles of the so-called inductive method, which, in his opinion, was supposed to defeat the idols of the human mind. All the idols being the minds of mankind, the philosopher divided into four types:

To the first, he attributed the idols of the family, by which are meant the errors and blunders inherent in it by nature itself;

Francis considered the idol of the cave to be the second kind, that is, those mistakes that a person makes under the influence of prejudices;

Bacon gave third place to the idols of the square caused of inaccuracies and imperfections in the language;

And finally, the fourth place in the classification of idols is given to the idols of the theater, the appearance of which is provoked by adherence to different types of systems, authorities, and doctrines.

In describing the prejudices that hide the development of science, the philosopher described the division of knowledge into three parts, in accordance with mental functions. He associated history with memory, poetry was responsible for the imagination, and philosophy (in combination with the Sciences) related to the mind. Bacon believed scientific knowledge is based on induction and experiment. Induction, turn, is complete and incomplete.

Complete induction meant the constant repeat of the properties of any object belonging to the class under consideration. In this case, one can generalize all such cases and end up with the same result. In the case of incomplete induction, not all examples are generalized, only some, because the number of these cases is so large that their number reaches infinity and is theory unprovable. In this case, the conclusion will always be probable.

While working on the creation of "True Induction", the scientist tried to find not only confirming facts but refuting certain conclusions. Thanks to him, two means of research emerged in natural science - enumeration and exclusion, and the leading role was given to exceptions. This method helped Bacon to come to the conclusion that the "form" of heat is nothing but the smallest particles of the body.

Francis Bacon's theory of knowledge was based on the idea that only sensory experience could give rise to true knowledge. This was this position of the philosopher that was called empirical The scholar studied the nature of human cognition and the boundaries of each category, emphasizing the most important areas that have yet to be explored, and which no one was interested in before him. The Baconian methodology is based on a gradual inductive generalization of the facts that arise during the experiments.

But the philosopher was not going to simplify the understanding of generalizations, he insisted that when analyzing facts, one should rely on reason. In 1620, the scholar completed work on a utopia, which he called "New Atlantis". She came out after his death in 1627. His work was conceived on such a scale as to rival Thomas More's Utopia.

King James called Francis's work a new lamp in the darkness of the philosophy of yesteryear and awarded him a decent pension of 1,200 pounds. The unfinished "New Atlantis" introduced the reader to a mysterious country called Bensalem, at the head of which was the "Solomon House" or as he also called it - "The Society for the Knowledge of the True Nature of All Things", which included all of the sages of the country.

Bacon's work was not like socialist and communist works, it had a well-defined technocratic character. The philosopher has discovered a new method of cognition, which was based on observation, and not on theory. It was this revelation that allowed Bacon to take his rightful place among the most important representatives of scientific thought.

Experimental science and the experimental-empirical method of doing research, outlined in the teachings of Bacon, have become an invaluable contribution of the philosopher to the development of human thought. But it is worth noting that during his lifetime, Francis failed to obtain more or less significant results both in the theoretical field and in experimental research. Furthermore, representatives of experimental science categorically rejected Bacon's method of inductive cognition.

PERSONAL LIFE

It is known that in the personal life of the renowned philosopher there was only one official marriage. he married Alice Burnham, whose father was a London elder, Benedict Burnham. It is worth noting that the groom was 3 times older than his bride. At the time of the marriage, which took place on May 10, 1606, Francis was 45 years old, his bride was only 14. This marriage was childless.

DEATH

The famous philosopher died on April 9, 1626, he was only 66. Bacon always liked to study various natural phenomena, and once he rode in a carriage, accompanied by a royal physician, he decided on an experiment. Francis was interested in the issue of the effect of cold on the duration of the decay process, and he decided to find the answer experimentally.

Bacon was not too lazy to go to the market for a chicken carcass and bury it in the snow with his own hands During this process, he caught a bad cold, and the disease progressed rapidly and tragically ended. April 9, 1626, on the fifth day after the experiment, the scientist died. His resting place was the territory of the Church of St. Michael in the town of St. Albans, England. After the death of the renowned philosopher and lawyer, a monument was erected on his grave.

DISCOVERIES

Bacon was the author of two new scientific methods - induction and empiricism.

Induction implies a certain method of judgment that goes from the specific to the general. By experiment, it meant the study of a phenomenon under conditions that the observer can control. The main difference between the experiment and observation is that during the experiment you can interact actively with the object under study.

SELECTED WRITINGS

"Experiments, or moral and political instructions"

"On the dignity and multiplication of sciences"

"Experiments, or moral and political instructions"

"The Great Restoration of the Sciences, or the New Organon"

"Experiments, or moral and political instructions"

"New Atlantis"