Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy

by Stephen Gaukroger

This ambitious and important book provides the first truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher. It describes how Bacon transformed the values that had underpinned philosophical culture since antiquity by rejecting the traditional idea of a philosopher as someone engaged in contemplation of the cosmos. The book explores in detail how and why Bacon attempted to transform the largely esoteric discipline of natural philosophy into a public practice through a program in which practical science provided a model that inspired many from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Stephen Gaukroger shows that this reform of natural philosophy was dependent on the creation of a new philosophical persona: a natural philosopher shaped through submission to the dictates of Baconian method. This book will be recognized as a major contribution to Baconian scholarship, of special interest to historians of early-modern philosophy, science, and ideas.

Genres: Philosophy, History Of Science, History, Biography, Science, Nonfiction

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 11, 1997

About the author

Stephen Gaukroger is a British philosopher and intellectual historian. He is Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Sydney. Recently he also took up a position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen.

He received his BA (hons) in philosophy, with congratulatory first class honours, from the University of London in 1974, and his PhD, in history and philosophy of science, from the University of Cambridge in 1977. He was a Research Fellow at Clare Hall Cambridge, and then at the University of Melbourne, before joining the Philosophy Department at Sydney in 1981. In 2011, he moved to the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, a Corresponding Member of l’Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, and in 2003 was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal for contributions to history of philosophy and history of science. He is presently Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science, and ARC Professorial Fellow. His work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Serbian.

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

the moral authority of a class of people such as priests or philosophers relates to norms governing their behavior. In our times scientists have great moral authority. If one wonders where the persona of the scientist came from one should, Gaukroger argues, look to Francis Bacon. This book is not a biography and some appreciation for Bacon's life would be helpful before reading it. It is what one might call an intellectual biography; it follows the development of Bacon's ideas. To do this well one must be familiar with the intellectual context in which Bacon works. Gaukroger does his best to spell this out, but I often found myself feeling that my background was inadequate to fully appreciate the points being made. This is a challenging book. I have read it twice now and feel that with the background I picked up between readings I got much more from it on the second reading.

[Plato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard and full of meticulous detail, but a very good introduction to the first natural philosopher that pushed the west on the path to develop into the scientific culture that we know today.