Francis Bacon (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Perez Zagorin
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Biography/Philosophy
- Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Biography
- Subjects: History, Language or languages, Philosophy or philosophers, Authors or writers, Science or scientists, Law or legislation, Ethics, Thought or thinking
- Locales: England
FRANCIS BACON, a reasonably short and readable book, traces the development of thought of a man who lived, according to author Perez Zagorin, “two lives.” One was that of an intensely ambitious lawyer who waged a long, uneven campaign for political and judicial preferment under two monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. The other, simultaneously, was a scholarly one aiming at nothing short of a sweeping and systematic reform of human knowledge in an era when many strands of ancient and medieval thought remained woven into the new world view of Renaissance Europe. Bacon’s scheme was impossibly complex and comprehensive, even for a man concentrating on one life, but it had the effect of rousing his contemporaries and later generations at the beginning of a period usually regarded as establishing the foundations of the modern world.
Bacon was a brilliant stylist who suspected literary style as something that often and easily diverted students and scholars from the unimpeded pursuit of truth. His own scheme of knowledge involved hypothesis, experimentation, and induction. Curiously, he has been charged by critics with failure to formulate hypotheses, little actual practice of experimentation, and misunderstanding of induction. The charges, as Zagorin shows, are only partly just, and Bacon’s real accomplishment was that of an eloquent and influential herald of scientific study with the avowed purpose of harnessing nature to work to relieve the physical and other burdens faced by humankind in his time.
Zagorin has absorbed the hundreds of modern books and articles on his subject, written an absorbing introductory chapter on Bacon’s life, and gone on to survey and evaluate Bacon’s contribution to the making of the modern world.
Sources for Further Study
Kirkus Reviews. LXVI, April 15, 1998, p. 572.
New Scientist. CLVIII, May 2, 1998, p. 45.
Publishers Weekly. CCXLV, April 6, 1998, p. 70.
The Times Literary Supplement. June 19, 1998, p. 12.
The Wall Street Journal. July 23, 1998, p. A14.
The Washington Post Book World. XXVIII, May 31, 1998, p. 13.
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