Background
Briggs, John Channing was born on February 5, 1948 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Channing Matthew and Virginia Dale Briggs.
( Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature offers a synt...)
Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature offers a synthesis of Bacon’s views about language and nature. John Briggs clarifies the close relation between Bacon’s famous reform of scientific method and his less well-known conceptions of rhetoric, nature, and religion. He examines traditional views of nature and persuasion that were influential in the intellectual and practical life of early-seventeenth-century England, and shows how Bacon replaces the “old nature” – with is gradual unfolding of organic potential – with a “new nature” of violence, secrecy, and instantaneous revelation rewarding the self-abnegating, assiduous sons of science. Briggs explores Bacon’s paradoxes and puzzles in the context of the older Aristotelian and cosmological perspective, paying particular attention to the views of persuasion. He points out a remarkable and complex consistency in Bacon’s use of Solomon, Moses, Paul, and the Greeks, and reveals the depth of Bacon’s conviction that nature is God’s code, which scientists decipher and exploit. He uncovers, throughout in Bacon’s work, a darker, more Machiavellian and ingenious Bacon than the twentieth-century admirers of his rationalist façade have identified.
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literature and language professor
Briggs, John Channing was born on February 5, 1948 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Channing Matthew and Virginia Dale Briggs.
Bachelor, Harvard University. Master of Arts, University Chicago. Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago.
Member faculty University California, Riverside, since 1980. Director inland area writing project University California, since 1992, director entry level writing program, since 1980. Member advisory committee College Board, New York City, 2002—2004.
( Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature offers a synt...)
Member of Association Literary Scholars and Critics (chair curriculum committee 1992—2001), Riverside Breakfast Forum (chair 2004).
Married Andrea Hawison Wuest, December 20, 1975. Children: Emily, Christopher, Katharine.