Francis Bacon and Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

Of the great scientific figures of early seventeenth century England — Harvey, Gilbert, and Bacon — none was so often referred to by members of the Royal Society for a statement of the aims and method of science as was Bacon. Thomas Sprat, the official historian and apologist for the Society, wrote in 1667 in his History of the Royal Society concerning Bacon’s foresight: “I shall only mention one great Man, who had the true Imagination of the whole extent of this Enterprise [the new science of the Royal Society], as it is now set on foot; and that is, the Lord Bacon. In whose Books there are every where scatter’d the best arguments that can be produc’d for the defense of Experimental Philosophy; and the best directions, that are needful to promote it.”¹