Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy

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Cambridge University Press, 2001 M03 19 - 249 pages
This ambitious and important book, first published in 2001, provides a 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.
 

Contents

Prologue
1
1 The nature of Bacons project
6
2 Humanist models for scientia
37
3 The legitimation of natural philosophy
68
4 The shaping of the natural philosopher
101
5 Method as a way of pursuing natural philosophy
132
6 Dominion over nature
166
Conclusion
221
Bibliography
227
Index
243
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