Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of DiscourseBy modern standards Bacon's writings are striking in their range and diversity, and they are too often considered a separate specialist concerns in isolation from each other. Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or of presentation. She shows how such an interpretation makes consistent (and often surprising) sense of the whole corpus of Bacon's writings: how the familiar but misunderstood inductive method for natural science relations to the more information strategies of argument in his historical, ethical, political and literary work. There is a substantial and valuable study of the intellectual Renaissance background from which Bacon emerged and against which he reacted. Through a series of details comparisons and contrasts we are led to appreciate the true originality and ingenuity of Bacon's own views and also to discount the more superficial resemblances between them and later developments in the philosophy of science. |
Contents
Dialectic and method in the sixteenth | 17 |
An English dialectical controversy | 59 |
Bacons theory of knowledge | 76 |
The goal of the interpretation of nature | 109 |
Analogy and generalisation in natural | 133 |
Analogy and generalisation in ethics | 150 |
Methods of communication | 169 |
Exempla | 194 |
Bacons view of rhetoric | 216 |
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Common terms and phrases
according to Bacon Agricola apophthegm argument Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's arts Augmentis axioms Bacon believed better known bodies Caesarius Cambridge causes chapter Cicero civil history classification of knowledge colour comparison context definition demonstration dialectic handbook Dialectica Digby discourse discovery discussion division effect Erotemata essay ethics example exemplum experience experientia literata faculty psychology follows Francis Bacon generalisations gives heat hence Henry VII human images imagination inductive method interpretation of nature invention investigation judgment Lemmi literary logic Machiavelli material matter Melanchthon metaphysic mind motion myth natural history natural philosophy Novum Organum observations parable particular Peter of Spain physical political Posterior Analytics practical precepts presentation principles procedure produce propositions proverb quae Quintilian Ramist Ramus reason renaissance resemblance rhetoric rhetorical induction rules sciences scientific sense simple natures syllogism syllogistic teaching techniques theory things tion topics traditional treatment trivium true truth universal Vickers Zabarella