Francis Bacon

Past Masters

by Anthony Quinton

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, Nonfiction

127 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2000

About the author

Anthony Meredith Quinton, Baron Quinton, FBA was an English political and moral philosopher, metaphysician, and materialist philosopher of mind. He served as President of Trinity College, Oxford from 1978 to 1987; and as chairman of the board of the British Library from 1985 to 1990. He is also remembered as a presenter of the BBC Radio programme Round Britain Quiz.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

To begin with a disclaimer: philosophy baffles and usually defeats me. The major sections of this book dealing with the intellectual background to Bacon's work; with his critiques of scholasticism, humanism, and occultism; and with the systems and new methods of scientific thought that he propounded, did little to remedy that, or to challenge my suspicion that, where understanding of philosophy is concerned, "For he that hath, to him shall be given." Although it is much clearer on Bacon's place in history, and on his more literary writing, I am not sure that I finished this book with a much greater appreciation of Bacon's thought than I would have got from an encyclopedia entry. The fault may, of course, lie in myself; but Quinton's account is uncompromising, too packed in relation to the length of the book, and written in a manner that aims to be lively and evaluative, but comes across all too often as judgmental and superior. Not for the uninitiated.

[Leo Horovitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short and fairly good overview of the philosophy of Francis Bacon. The approach seemed more historical than purely philosophical as the presentation contained much about the philosophical and scientific climate in which Bacon developed his ideas as well as his predecessors, contemporaries, and future disciples; but not many details on his actual system. Bacon's philosophy of science is dealt with as it relates to other philosophers' ideas of science, logic and knowledge and its consequences and relation to contemporary scientific development is treated in some detail, but the system itself is only presented very briefly.

The result is that one puts down the book feeling as having obtained a fair understanding of Bacon's role in the historic development of the philosophy of science, but having only a superficial grasp of the philosophical ideas themselves.