economic and political matters and also
advocated the union of England and Scot-
land under a single monarch. At the same
time, his continuing financial troubles
brought him under suspicion of corrup-
tion. In 1621 Bacon was investigated and
then forced out of office for taking bribes.
He was fined forty thousand pounds, im-
prisoned in the Tower of London for sev-
eral days, and banned from holding any
official position in the future. After this
fallfromgraceBaconretiredfrompublic
life and turned to studying and writing.
Bacon’s works includeThe Colours of
Good and Evil, Meditationes Sacrae, The
Advancement of Learning(1605), andNo-
vum Organum, published in 1620. His
most famous work is a book titledEssays,
a collection of writings that he began as-
sembling in 1597 that span thirty years. In
his essays and books Bacon describes a
new method of deductive reasoning, urg-
ing scientists and philosophers to proceed
on the foundation of observable facts in-
stead of from popular religious or philo-
sophical doctrines, whether they originated
in the ancient or medieval world. Further,
the scientist should avoid certain habits of
mind, which Bacon called “Idols,” that
arose from their own nature, from their
use of language, from their upbringing,
and from the society in which they lived.
In his view a rigorously factual investiga-
tion and controlled experiments would
eventually lead to the discovery of general
principles that governed all natural phe-
nomena. In De Augmentis Scientiarum,
published in 1623, Bacon separates duty to
society from duty to God, and denies the
idea that universal principles should gov-
ern human actions in their social, nonreli-
gious lives. He recognizes the separation of
science and religion, maintaining that faith
could not be justified through the intellect
and that scientific investigation could not
proceed on faith. This philosophy marked
the end of an age in which strict religious
doctrines bound European thinkers, writ-
ers, and scientists; and when philosophers
constructed elaborate but artificial systems
to explain the evidence of their senses.
New AtlantisisanovelBaconwrotein
the 1620s in which he creates a utopian
society founded on scientific principles
that bring about a variety of useful inven-
tions: a way to preserve food by chilling it,
a system of controlling the air temperature
within closed rooms, and a method of
speaking across long distances. Although
he was no scientist, throughout his life Ba-
con sought to apply his philosophical prin-
ciples to experiments to the best of his
ability, using materials at hand. In 1626,
while traveling on a cold winter’s day, he
was inspired by a new idea for preserving
food. He had a woman kill and clean a
chicken that he then stuffed with snow.
Falling ill with pneumonia, he then ate the
chicken in an attempt to ward off the ill-
ness and soon came down with a fatal case
of food poisoning.
Bacon enjoyed little popularity during
his lifetime, but his reputation grew post-
humously through the seventeenth cen-
tury, when many scientists relied on the
philosophical foundation he had laid in
their pursuit of scientific truth. The estab-
lishment of England’s Royal Society in
1660 was largely inspired by Bacon’s phi-
losophy, which advocated benefitting the
general public welfare through the ad-
vancement of science.SEEALSO: Aristotelianism; Elizabeth I;
James I of EnglandBarocci, Federico ...............................
(ca. 1526–1612)
One of the leading Italian artists of the
early Baroque period. Born as FedericoBarocci, Federico