The English Renaissance lasted from about 1580 to 1626, and produced some of the world's most outstanding literature. At the core of this output was Sir Francis Bacon, a prodigious writer and philosopher. By opening the rational world to the creative mind, Bacon set the foundations upon which modern society has been built. In his major work, The Advancement of Learning, Bacon proposed the Novum Organum, a "new tool" for the rational mind: inductive reasoning. Better-known today as the scientific method, inductive reasoning replaced the syllogistic simplicity of Aristotelian deductive reasoning with the creative act of hypothesis and experiment. Consider Bacon's statement:
"If a man will begin with certainties,he will end in doubts;but if he will be content to begin with doubts,he will end in certainties."
Dissent in Renaissance England was a risky proposition,
Francis Bacon's name is hidden throughout the original 1623 Folio of Shakespearean plays. This "B" with "Francis" and "Bacon" inserted in the scrollwork is from the first word of The Tempest, Boteswaine, The story was first published in 1931 in the Cincinnati Times-Star newspaper and in the Literary Digest.
Francis Bacon's visionary essay 'The New Atlantis' (published 1627) contained the democratic seeds of a better way of life and a philosophy based on man being in harmony with nature. The American Founding Fathers 150 years after the essay was written were influenced to set those guidelines into action.
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