Sir Amias Paulet (1532 – 26 September 1588) of Hinton St. George, Somerset, was an English diplomat, Governor of Jersey, and the gaoler for a period of Mary, Queen of Scots.
associate: Johann Andreae
Engraving of Johann Valentin Andreae by Wolfgang Kilian (source of image: Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel).
(The Novum Organum, (or Novum Organum Scientiarum - "New I...)
The Novum Organum, (or Novum Organum Scientiarum - "New Instrument of Science"), is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, originally published in 1620. The title is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as the Baconian method.
Selections From the Works of Lord Bacon: Comprising the Prefaces to the Instauratio Magna and Novum Organum, the Distributio Operis, and the Fifth and ... De Augmentis Scientiarum
Francis Bacon was a legendary English philosopher, scientist, lawyer, author, statesman, jurist, and the father of scientific methods. He was one of the most influential personalities in natural philosophy and was also a key thinker to develop new scientific methodologies.
Background
Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, in London, England. Bacon was born into a prominent wealthy family and was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Anne Cooke, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. She was a scholar, translator, and holder of strong Puritan beliefs. She tried hard to ensure her children were as well-educated and as puritanical as she was. Anne Cooke’s father had been tutor to King Henry the Eighth’s son, who became King Edward the Sixth of England.
Education
Bacon was tutored at home until he was 12, then from 1573 to 1575 he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but his weak constitution caused him to suffer ill health there. In 1576 he began the study of law at Gray's Inn, but his studies were interrupted for 2,5 years. His lessons were conducted entirely in Latin, focusing on arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, grammar, music theory, logic, and rhetoric.
From 1576 to 1579 Bacon was in France as a member of the English ambassador’s suite. He served with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador to France. He was recalled abruptly after the sudden death of his father, who left him relatively little money.
After becoming a barrister in 1582 he progressed in time through the posts of a reader (lecturer at the Inn), bencher (senior member of the Inn), and queen’s (from 1603 king’s) counsel extraordinary to those of solicitor general and attorney general.
In 1584 he sat as the Member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis in Dorset and subsequently represented Taunton, Liverpool, the County of Middlesex, Southampton, Ipswich, and the University of Cambridge. From time to time he addressed letters of advice to Queen Elizabeth, notable for their unbiased presentation of the most expedient political action on the points under discussion; if his advice had been followed, some of the later troubles between the Crown and Parliament might have been avoided.
In 1593 came a setback to his political hopes: he took a stand objecting to the government’s intensified demand for subsidies to help meet the expenses of the war against Spain. Elizabeth took offense, and Bacon was in disgrace during several critical years when there were chances for legal advancement.
Bacon tied himself closely to Essex and received many favors from him but later helped prosecute him for treason. While his part in the fate of Essex has been criticized as an ungrateful betrayal, it has also been defended as a duty painfully performed. In 1604 Bacon published "Apologie in Certaine Imputations Concerning the Late Earle of Essex" in defense of his own actions.
When Elizabeth died in 1603, Bacon’s letter-writing ability was directed to finding a place for himself and a use for his talents in James I’s services. He pointed to his concern for Irish affairs, the union of the kingdoms, and the pacification of the church as proof that he had much to offer the new king. The following year he was confirmed as learned counsel and sat in the first Parliament of the new reign in the debates of its first session. He was also active as one of the commissioners for discussing a union with Scotland. In 1605 he published "The Advancement of Learning," hoping to move James to support science.
Preferment in the royal service, however, still eluded him, and it was not until June 1607 that his petitions and his vigorous though vain efforts to persuade the Commons to accept the king’s proposals for union with Scotland were at length rewarded with the post of Solicitor General.
In 1609 his "De Sapientia Veterum" ("The Wisdom of the Ancients"), in which he expounded what he took to be the hidden practical meaning embodied in ancient myths, came out and proved to be, next to "Essayes," his most popular book in his own lifetime. In 1614 he seems to have written "The New Atlantis," his far-seeing scientific utopian work, which did not get into print until 1626.
In 1612 Bacon renewed his efforts to gain influence with the king, writing a number of remarkable papers of advice upon affairs of state and, in particular, upon the relations between Crown and Parliament. The king adopted his proposal for removing Coke from his post as chief justice of the common pleas and appointing him to the King’s Bench, while appointing Bacon attorney general in 1613. During the next few years, Bacon’s views about the royal prerogative brought him, as attorney general, increasingly into conflict with Coke, the champion of the common law and of the independence of the judges. Coke’s dismissal in November 1616 for defying this order was quickly followed by Bacon’s appointment as lord keeper of the great seal in March 1617.
Between 1608 and 1620 he prepared at least 12 drafts of his most-celebrated work "Novum organum" and wrote several minor philosophical works. "Novum organum" was a philosophical treatise in Latin which constituted the only completed part of the second division of Bacon's projected philosophical system "Instauratio magna." Having outlined the several fields of knowledge in "De augmentis," which constituted the first division of "Instauratio magna," Bacon developed his method for the further advancement of learning and the interpretation of nature in "Novum organum," literally "New Instrument." In the second book, he describes the inductive method, whereby he proposes to overthrow all the "Idols" of the mind. Here he sets up three methods of induction, insisting primarily upon the necessity of discovering "forms" in nature, that is, upon finding the unique qualities of phenomena.
The last 4 years of his life he devoted to writing "History of Henry VII," "De Augmentis Scientiarum" (1623), "The New Atlantis" (1624), "Sylva sylvarum" (1627), and a number of other pieces.
Bacon’s immense prestige and influence in later seventeenth-century science does not rest upon positive achievements in either experiment or theory but, rather, upon his vision of science expressed in Novum organum and New Atlantis, and in particular upon his fundamental optimism about the possibilities for its rapid development. Now that the true method had been described, he thought all that was required was the purgation of the intellect to make a fit instrument for the method, and the human and financial resources to carry it out. When patronage and manpower for the organization of science were eventually forthcoming in the form of the Royal Society, its Philosophical Transactions was soon full of just the sort of "histories" Bacon had prescribed. His program for the raising of axioms, however, was taken less seriously than his strictures against "anticipations" and hypotheses, so that the weight of his influence was toward empiricism rather than toward theoretical system-building. At the time this did provide a useful corrective to Cartesianism, as can even be seen in Newton’s insistence on the inductive "ascent" to the law of gravitation, in contrast with the merely imagined hypotheses of Descartes. But although most leading members of the Royal Society took every opportunity to proclaim themselves Bacon’s loyal disciples, they tacitly adopted a more tolerant attitude toward hypotheses than his; and subsequent theoretical developments took place in spite of, rather than as examples of, his elaboration of the method. His successors in this area should be sought among the inductive logicians, beginning with Hume and Mill, and not among the scientists.
Bacon died on April 9, 1626, at the age of 65 of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He is buried at St Michael's Church, St Albans, Hertfordshire.
Bacon was a devout Anglican. He believed that philosophy and the natural world must be studied inductively, but argued that we can only study arguments for the existence of God. Information on his attributes (such as nature, action, and purposes) can only come from special revelation. But Bacon also held that knowledge was cumulative, that study encompassed more than a simple preservation of the past. "Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate," he wrote. In his Essays, he affirms that "a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
Views
Although Bacon's contribution to the natural sciences was almost entirely literary; and, indeed, it has been shown that much of the empirical material collected in his "histories" is not the result of his own firsthand observation, but is taken directly from literary sources. Furthermore, most of Bacon’s comments on both his scientific contemporaries and his philosophical predecessors are critical. For example, he never accepted the Copernican "hypothesis," attacking both Ptolemy and Copernicus for producing mere "calculations and predictions" instead of "philosophy...what is found in nature herself, and is actually and really true." On similar grounds, he attacked the theory of "perspective" as not providing a proper theory of the nature of light because it never went further than geometry. Mathematics was, he thought, to be used as a tool in natural philosophy, not as an end, and he had no pretensions to mathematical learning. He was not unsympathetic to Gilbert’s magnetic philosophy, but he criticized him for leaping too quickly to a single unifying principle without due regard for the experiment.
Bacon’s closest associations with contemporary science were with atomism and with the Renaissance tradition of natural magic. His views on atomism underwent considerable change during the period of his philosophical writings, from a sympathetic discussion of Democritus in De sapientia veterum and De principiis atque originibus to outright rejection of "the doctrine of atoms, which implies the hypothesis of a vacuum and that of the unchangeableness of matter (both false assumptions)" in Novum organum. There were both philosophical and scientific reasons for this change of mind. Even in his earlier works, Bacon posed the fundamental dilemma of atomism: either the atom is endowed with some of the qualities that are familiar to sense, such as "matter, form, dimension, place, resistance, appetite...," in which case it is difficult to justify taking these qualities rather than any other sensible qualities as primary; or the atom is wholly different from bodies apprehended by the senses, in which case it is difficult to see how we come to know anything about them. On the other hand, empirical phenomena of cohesion and continuity are impossible to understand in terms of inert atoms alone; and the existence of spirituous substances, even in space void of air, seems to cast doubt upon the existence of the absolute void demanded by atomism.
In any case, Bacon was never an orthodox atomist, for as early as De sapientia veterum he insisted that the atom has active powers other than mere impenetrability - it has "desire," "appetite," and "force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter." In Novum organum these qualities are ascribed to bodies in general. All bodies have powers to produce change in themselves and in other bodies; they have "perceptions" that, although distinct from the "sensations" of animals, nevertheless enable them to respond to other bodies, as iron does in the neighborhood of a magnet. That virtues seem thus to emanate from bodies through space is an argument for suspecting that there may be incorporeal substances: "Everything tangible that we are acquainted with contains an invisible and intangible spirit, which it wraps and clothes as with a garment." It "gives them [bodies] shape, produces limbs, assimilates, digests, ejects, organises and the like." It "feeds upon" tangible parts and "turns them into spirit."
Quotations:
"For peace and war, and those things which appertain to either; I in my own disposition and profession am wholly for peace, if please God to bless his kingdom therewith, as for many years past he hath done [...] God is the God of peace; it is one of his attributes, therefore by him alone must we pray, and hope to continue it: there is the foundation. [...] (Concerning the establishment of colonies in the 'New World') To make no extirpation of the natives under pretence of planting religion: God surely will no way be pleased with such sacrifices."
"The corruption of philosophy by the mixing of it up with superstition and theology, is of a much wider extent, and is most injurious to it both as a whole and in parts."
"Above all things, good policy must be used to prevent the treasure of a kingdom from getting into few hands; otherwise a state may starve in the midst of wealth: for money is like manure, unfruitful if not spread."
"I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well…"
Membership
Bacon was a member of the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn. Also, the Rosicrucian organization AMORC claims that Bacon was the "Imperator" (leader) of the Rosicrucian Order in both England and the European continent, and would have directed it during his lifetime.
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn
,
United Kingdom
1576 - 1626
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Since childhood Bacon had a rather weak constitution which caused him to suffer ill health.
Quotes from others about the person
"Bacon first taught the world the true method of the study of nature, and rescued science from that barbarism in which the followers of Aristotle, by a too servile imitation of their master, had involved it."- Thomas Young, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, 1845.
"Bacon, Locke, and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences." - Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States.
Connections
When Bacon was 36, he courted Elizabeth Hatton, a young widow of 20. Reportedly, she broke off their relationship upon accepting marriage to a wealthier man, Bacon's rival, Sir Edward Coke. Years later, Bacon still wrote of his regret that the marriage to Hatton had not taken place. In 1606, at the age of 45, Francis Bacon married Alice Barnham, the 14-year-old daughter of a well-connected London alderman and MP. There were no heirs from this marriage.