The most comprehensive collection available of Bacon's philosophical and scientific writings, this volume offers Bacon's major works in their entirety, or in generous selections, revised from the classic 19th century editions of Spedding, Ellis and Heath. Selections from Bacon's natural histories round out this edition by showing the types of compilations that he believed would most contribute to the third part of his Great Instauration. In her General Introduction, Rose-Mary Sargent sketches Bacon's early life, education, and legal career, and discusses the major components of his philosophical works, and traces his influence on subsequent natural philosophy.

This book, first published in 2001, provides a truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher.

The essays in the present volume attempt to historically reconstruct the various dependencies of philosophical and scientific knowledge of the material and technical culture of the early modern era and to draw systematic conclusions for the writing of early modern history of science. The divisive transformation of humanist scholarly culture, the Scholastic school philosophy, as well as magic in the form of a philosophy of practice is always associated with the work of Francis Bacon. All of these essays in this volume reflect the close interaction between technical models and knowledge production in natural philosophy, natural history and epistemology. It becomes clear that the technological developments of the early modern era cannot be adequately depicted in the form of a pure history of technology but rather only as part of a broader, cultural history of the sciences. Contributors include: Todd Andrew Borlik, Arianna Borrelli, Thomas Brandstetter, Daniel Damler, Luisa Dolza, Moritz Epple, Berthold Heinecke, Dana Jalobeanu, J rgen Klein, Staffan M ller-Wille, Romano Nanni, Jarmo Pulkkinen, Pablo Schneider, Andr s Vaccari, Benjamin Wardhaugh, Sophie Weeks, and Claus Zittel.

"Presents close analysis of eight of Francis Bacon's texts in order to investigate the relation of his religious views to his instauration. Attempts to correct the persistent misconception of Bacon as a secular modern who dismissed religion in order to promote the human advancement of knowledge"--Provided by publisher.