Works by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban(s), KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.

Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the Scientific Method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.

Francis Bacon is considered one of the fathers of modern science. He proposed, at his time, a great reformation of all process of knowledge for the advancement of learning divine and human. He called it Instauratio Magna (The Great Instauration). Bacon planned his Great Instauration in imitation of the Divine Work – the Work of the Six Days of Creation, as defined in the Bible, leading to the Seventh Day of Rest or Sabbath in which Adam's dominion over creation would be restored, thus dividing the great reformation in six parts:

For Bacon, this reformation would lead to a great advancement in science and a progeny of new inventions that would relieve mankind's miseries and needs.

In Novum Organum, the second part of the Instauration, he stated his view that the restoration of science was part of the "partial returning of mankind to the state it lived before the fall", restoring its dominion over creation, while religion and faith would partially restore mankind's original state of innocence and purity.

In the book The Great Instauration, he also gave some admonitions regarding the ends and purposes of science, from which much of his philosophy can be deduced. He said that men should confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect to things divine, while not falling in the opposite error which would be to think that inquisition of nature is forbidden by divine law. Another admonition was concerning the ends of science: that mankind should seek knowledge not for pleasure, contention, superiority over others, profit, fame, or power, but for the benefit and use of life, and that they perfect and govern it in charity.

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