Baconian Science

In the introduction to Thomas Spratt’s History of the Royal Society, there is a poem about man called Francis Bacon which declares ‘Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last, The barren wilderness he past, Did on the very border stand Of the blest promis’d land, And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and shew’d us it’.Francis Bacon was a lawyer and political schemer who climbed the greasy pole of Jacobean politics and then fell down it again. But he is most famous for developing an idea of how science should be done - a method that he hoped would slough off the husk of ancient thinking and usher in a new age. It is called Baconian Method and it has influenced and inspired scientists from Bacon’s own time to the present day.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Patricia Fara 17 episodes
  
• Stephen Pumfrey 5 episodes
  
• Rhodri Lewis No other episodes
  

Related episodes

• Roger Bacon
  
  20 Apr, 2017 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Royal Society
  
  23 Mar, 2006 500 Science
• The Scientific Method
  
  26 Jan, 2012 500 Science
• The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 1
  
  4 Jan, 2010 500 Science
• The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2
  
  5 Jan, 2010 500 Science
• Robert Boyle
  
  12 Jun, 2014 540 Chemistry
• The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 3
  
  6 Jan, 2010 500 Science
• Common Sense Philosophy
  
  21 Jun, 2007 120 Epistemology
• Episode 5
  
  6 Jan, 2012 410 Linguistics
• The Scientist
  
  24 Oct, 2002 500 Science

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b00jdb6c

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jdb6c

Auto-category: 501 (Philosophy and theory of natural science and mathematics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In the introduction to Thomas Pratt's History of the Royal Society, there's a poem about Francis Bacon.