Francis Bacon And The Transformation Of Early-Modern Philosophy

This ambitious and important book provides the first truly general account ofFrancis Bacon as a philosopher. It describes how Bacon transformed the valuesthat h... » 

This ambitious and important book provides the first truly general account ofFrancis Bacon as a philosopher. It describes how Bacon transformed the valuesthat had underpinned philosophical culture since antiquity by rejecting thetraditional idea of a philosopher as someone engaged in contemplation of thecosmos. The book explores in detail how and why Bacon attempted to transformthe largely esoteric discipline of natural philosophy into a public practicethrough a program in which practical science provided a model that inspiredmany from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Stephen Gaukroger showsthat this reform of natural philosophy was dependent on the creation of a newphilosophical persona a natural philosopher shaped through submission to thedictates of Baconian method. This book will be recognized as a majorcontribution to Baconian scholarship of special interest to historians ofearlymodern philosophy science and ideas. «