Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called policy or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was...
In this book Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of Francis Bacon.
Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. Two programmes: know thyself and know the universe of nature; 3. Knowledges are as pyramids, whereof history is the basis - history civil - this latter extended to describe and to include the Common Law of England; 4. Logic - idols of the mind - rhetoric; 5. Policy: a great part of philosophy - Bacon's engagements of policy; 6. Morality and policy I; 7. Morality and policy II; 8. Morality and policy III; 9. Morality and policy IV; 10. Civil history of letters - civil history mixed; 11. Civil history of the reign of King Henry the 7th; 12. Aims and claims - but no metaphysics of nature; 13. No metaphysics of nature - civil history supplies Bacon's masculine birth of time; 14. Bacon and his markers I; 15. Bacon and his markers II; Notes; Index.