Francis Bacon, the State and the Reform of Natural Philosophy
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Cambridge University Press (1992)
Why was it that Francis Bacon, trained for high political office, devoted himself to proposing a celebrated and sweeping reform of the natural sciences? Julian Martin's investigative study looks at Bacon's family context, his employment in Queen Elizabeth's security service and his radical critique of the relationship between the Common Law and the Monarchy, to find the key to this important question. Deeply conservative and elitist in his political views, Bacon adapted Tudor strategies of State management and bureaucracy, the social anxieties and prejudices of the late-Elizabethan governing elite, and a principal intellectual resource of the English governing classes - the Common Law - into a novel vision and method for the sciences. Bacon's axiom that 'Knowledge is Power' takes on far-reaching implications in Martin's challenging argument that the reform of natural philosophy was a central part of an audacious plan to strengthen the powers of the Crown in the State.
|Keywords||Science History Political science History|
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|Call number||B1198.M36 1992|
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Citations of this work BETA
Jan Schmidt (2011). The Renaissance of Francis Bacon. NanoEthics 5 (1):29-41.
R. W. Serjeantson (1999). Testimony and Proof in Early-Modern England. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 30 (2):195-236.
Markku Peltonen (1999). A Revisionist History of the Scientific Revolution. Social Epistemology 13 (3 & 4):323 – 330.
Cassandra L. Pinnick (1998). Francis Bacon: A Sure Plan. [REVIEW] Metascience 7 (3):515-523.
Silvia Manzo (2014). Certainty, Laws and Facts in Francis Bacon’s Jurisprudence. Intellectual History Review 24 (4):457-478.
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