Front cover image for Francis Bacon and the transformation of early-modern philosophy

Francis Bacon and the transformation of early-modern philosophy

"This book 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 we shall not understand Bacon unless we understand that a key component of this program for the reform of natural philosophy was the creation of a new philosophical persona: a natural philosopher shaped through submission to the dictates of Baconian method. Thus, we begin to glimpse how the scientific paradigm for cognitive inquiry in our own culture was formed." "This book will be recognised as a major contribution to Baconian scholarship of special interest to historians of early-modern philosophy, science, and ideas."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2001
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001
xii, 249 pages ; 24 cm
9780521801546, 9780521805360, 0521801540, 0521805368
44868987
The nature of Bacon's project
Humanist models for scientia
The legitimation of natural philosophy
The shaping of the natural philosopher
Method as a way of pursuing natural philosophy
Dominion over nature