Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St AlbanPC KC (/ˈbeɪkən/; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, 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 father of empiricism. His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive and careful observation of events in nature. Most importantly, he argued this could be achieved by use of a skeptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. While his own practical ideas about such a method, the Baconian method, did not have a long lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a skeptical methodology makes Bacon the father of scientific method. This marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, the practical details of which are still central in debates about science and methodology today.

Francis Bacon (disambiguation)

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was an English Elizabethan philosopher, statesman and essayist.

Francis Bacon may also refer to:

See also

Francis Bacon (judge)

Sir Francis Bacon (1587 – 1657) was an English judge.

Life

He was the son of John Bacon, of King's Lynn, Norfolk, born about 1587. He began his legal studies at Barnard's Inn, and was admitted a member of Gray's Inn in February 1607. He was not called to the bar until eight years later in 1615. His name as counsel is not found in contemporary reports, and it has been inferred that his practice must have been either in chancery or in the provinces.

In 1634 he was Autumn Reader at Gray's Inn; in 1640 he was admitted to the degree of serjeant-at-law. In October 1642, the king, being then at Bridgnorth on his way to London, appointed Bacon to a seat in the King's Bench. Among the propositions tendered by parliament to the king in February 1643 were demands for the dismissal of several of the judges, but 'Mr. Justice Bacon may be continued '. While Charles was at Oxford, Bacon was one of the sworn judges still at Westminster, of which there were three, and presided alone in the King's Bench, as Edmund Reeve and Trevor did in the Common Pleas and Exchequer