Francis Bacon: The New Organon

A new translation and edition of Bacon's revolutionary work of scientific philosophy.

Francis Bacon (Author), Lisa Jardine (Edited by), Michael Silverthorne (Edited by)

9780521563994, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 2000

292 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.6 kg

"The importance of this work is evident...the Cambridge edition does a respectable job at striving for both accuracy and readability. I would recommend this edition of Bacon's New Organon for use in survey and/or mid-level courses dealing with the development of seventeenth-century philosophy and science." Teaching Philosophy

When the New Organon appeared in 1620, part of a six-part programme of scientific inquiry entitled 'The Great Renewal of Learning', Francis Bacon was at the high point of his political career, and his ambitious work was groundbreaking in its attempt to give formal philosophical shape to a new and rapidly emerging experimentally-based science. Bacon combines theoretical scientific epistemology with examples from applied science, examining phenomena as various as magnetism, gravity, and the ebb and flow of the tides, and anticipating later experimental work by Robert Boyle and others. His work challenges the entire edifice of the philosophy and learning of his time, and has left its mark on all subsequent philosophical discussions of scientific method. This volume presents a new translation of the text into modern English by Michael Silverthorne, and an introduction by Lisa Jardine that sets the work in the context of Bacon's scientific and philosophical activities.

Plan of the work
The second part of the work: the New Organon or true directions for the interpretation of nature
Summary of the second part of the work, digested into aphorisms: Book I, Book II.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Mathematics & science [P], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]