Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521109086)

By modern standards Bacon's writings are striking in their range and diversity, and they are too often considered a separate specialist concerns in isolation from each other. Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or of presentation. She shows how such an interpretation makes consistent (and often surprising) sense of the whole corpus of Bacon's writings: how the familiar but misunderstood inductive method for natural science relations to the more information strategies of argument in his historical, ethical, political and literary work. There is a substantial and valuable study of the intellectual Renaissance background from which Bacon emerged and against which he reacted. Through a series of details comparisons and contrasts we are led to appreciate the true originality and ingenuity of Bacon's own views and also to discount the more superficial resemblances between them and later developments in the philosophy of science.

Author: Lisa Jardine
ISBN-10: 0521109086
ISBN-13: 9780521109086
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/18/2009
Pages: 276
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.62d