Francis Bacon

Statesman, Politician

1561 – 1626

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Who was Francis Bacon?

Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban, Kt., KC 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 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.

Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created both Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died by contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.

Famous Quotes:

  • Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
  • Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
  • Nature is commanded by obeying her.
  • Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
  • Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
  • That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.
  • Cure the disease and kill the patient.
  • Science is but an image of the truth.
  • No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being.
  • There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

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Born
Jan 22, 1561
Strand, London
Also known as
  • Sir Francis Bacon
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Religion
  • Anglicanism
Nationality
  • England
Profession
Education
  • Trinity College, Cambridge
    (1573/04/05 - )
  • University of Poitiers
  • University of Cambridge
Died
Apr 9, 1626
Highgate

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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"Francis Bacon." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/francis_bacon>.

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