Francis Bacon, a leading proponent of natural philosophy and scientific methodology, was an English lawyer, philosopher and scientist. Having written highly influential works on law, state and religion, politics and science, Bacon was an early pioneer of the scientific method who created “empiricism” and inspired the scientific revolution.
Early Life and Education:
Born on January 22, 1561 in Strand, London, Francis Bacon’s father, Nicholas Bacon, was a famous English politician and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Bacon was mostly homeschooled in his early years. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1573 when he was merely 12. He also attended the University of Poitiers.
Contributions and Achievements:
Francis Bacon is often called the father of modern science. He initiated a massive reformation of every process of knowledge for the advancement of learning divine and human. As the creator of empiricism, Francis Bacon formulated a set of empirical and inductive methodologies, for setting off a scientific inquiry, known as the Baconian method. His call for a plotted procedure of inquiring things, with an empiricist naturalistic approach, had a profound impact on the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science.
Bacon also served as the philosophical inspiration behind the progress of the Industrial age. He always suggested that scientific work should be done for charitable reasons, and for relieving mankind’s misery with the invention of useful things.
Bacon also authored several books and essays that advocated reformations of the law, and many of them regarding religious, moral and civil meditations.
Later Life and Death:
Francis Bacon was appointed a Lord Chancellor in 1618. Unfortunately, he was accused of bribery and was forced to resign, after which Bacon retired to his estate continuing with his literary, scientific, and philosophical work. He died of pneumonia in Highgate, London in...