Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man
Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Historical
Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man Details
About the Author Catherine Drinker Bowen's biographies include a work on Tchaikovsky, titled Beloved Friend, Yankee from Olympus, dealing with the live of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke, and John Adams and the American Revolution. She died in 1973.Dominic Balestra is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. Read more
Reviews
Bacon wrote this line about his approach to understanding nature and it seems wrong. Of course there were precedents. Many natural philosophers before Bacon had carefully studied nature. Scientists contemporary with Bacon like Galileo went well beyond him in actually describing the world. But what sets Bacon apart, and what actually was unprecedented, was his laying out on paper a new path for studying the book of nature strictly as it presents itself - what we call the inductive method. We know today that his method, usually called simple induction, was naïve and inaccurate for describing what actually happens in science. But Bacon's insistence that, in order to break through the prejudices of words and the straitjacket of medieval logic, we must back off and let nature tell us what it will - this was first laid out by Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England. It was a unique contribution to the revolution in science and physics that was happening in Europe. While Descartes trusted his mind and mistrusted his senses, Bacon mistrusted the mind and argued that what the senses tell us must be the starting point.Bacon had two overriding goals in life. One was to rise politically and socially. His father was Lord Chancellor of England and his youngest son was determined to reach his father's achievement, something he eventually did. But Bacon's other goal was to live a contemplative life of writing where he could examine the beauty of nature that he loved to be around and write down the method of discovery unencumbered by the Scholastic framework. These goals were almost always in conflict and Catherine Drinker Bowen does a great job of showing their constant tension in Bacon's life. I had no idea of all the political ups and downs that Bacon went through. After spending most of his life climbing the social ladder, he is impeached as Lord Chancellor for bribes which he fully admitted and actually spent time in the Tower. (But, as King James said, if he were to punish all those that took bribes in his kingdom, he would soon have no subjects left.) Then, in disgrace, Bacon writes some of his best work in his last five years; he finally had time for the full contemplative life. His honesty and insight about himself and the world around him is remarkable for his time. As Bowen notes, sometimes you have to read Bacon to actually believe he wrote what he did. Bowen gives many examples of his aphorisms, a literary form Bacon favored. On the other hand, despite his thoughtfulness and honesty, his flaws such as his complete inability to handle money intelligently plagued him throughout his life. All of this is brought out well in this biography.As another reviewer notes, Bowen's writing style has a literary flare to it. She says things like: "Never was mortal man so busy" or "Lady Bacon fired off her heavy guns." The result for me was to create less distance between author and reader. The sense given is that the reader is being taken along on this journey. I thoroughly enjoyed Bowen's style. If I have any criticism of the book, it is that Bowen could have spent a little more time spelling out Bacon's philosophical innovations in the history of science. She does cover those but the majority of the book is spent on the political and social aspects of Bacon's life. But this book was not written specifically for a scientific audience and clearly the most wrenching and life-changing events in Bacon's life were due to his social and political aspirations. As an overall biography of the man, the book is excellent. For breathing life into a critical person in the history of science that we know very little about, I highly recommend Bowen's book.
