The Advancement of Learning: Francis Bacon

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CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Aug 30, 2016 - Philosophy - 98 pages
The Advancement of Learning - Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human - Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban 22 January 1561 - 9 April 1626, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution. Bacon was generally neglected at court by Queen Elizabeth, but after the ascension of King James I in 1603, Bacon was knighted. He was later created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621. Because he had no heirs, both titles became extinct upon his death in 1626, at 65 years of age. Bacon died of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. The Advancement of Learning is a 1605 book by Francis Bacon. It inspired the taxonomic structure of the highly influential Encyclopédie by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot, and is credited by Bacon's biographer-essayist Catherine Drinker Bowen with being a pioneering essay in support of empirical philosophy.

About the author (2016)

Francis Bacon was born on October 28, 1909. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, to parents of British decent but lived with his nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, for many of his formative years. Bacon began painting in his early 20s and worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. He lived between England and Ireland for many years, earning his money by becoming an interior decorator and a designer of furniture and rugs. In 1944 he created his breakthrough oil painting entitled, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion. The work is said to have been competed within the timeframe of two weeks. The painting was immediately seen as a sensation and established him as an important post-war artist. Bacon himself insisted that no retrospective of his work should include anything produced prior to 1944. Bacon was plagued with chronic asthma which developed into a respiratory condition. He died of cardiac arrest on April 28, 1992. He left his entire estate to his companion, John Edwards, who then donated the contents of Bacon's studio to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.

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