Bacon
Bacon names 6 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bacon FRANCIS, English philosopher and statesman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FRANCIS, English philosopher and statesman, born Jan. 22, 1561; youngest of eight children of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper. His mother, whom he resembled, was the sister of Lady Burghley and a woman of fine education and strong character. In his twelfth year Francis entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but left in June, 1576, to begin the study of law at Gray's Inn. Three months later he went to France in the entourage of Sir Amyas Paulet, the representative of the English Government. Here he laid the founda- FRANCIS BACON tion of his interest in matters of state. The death of his father left him in poverty, with his own 1582 he was again at Gray's Inn. He way to make. In entered Parliament in 1584, and wrote a letter to the Queen in which he urged strong repression of the Catholic party and foresaw the conflict with Spain. His chief interest, however, field of learning. He had previously exwas in the pressed dislike for the university course, dominated by scholastic prevented either additions to knowledge or fit training for the service of state. In 1592 he wrote the famous the letter to Burghley in which he said that he had taken all learning to be his province and laid down the foundations on which all his later work was to be based: "industrious observation, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries ," that is, a method of research capable of immediate application to life in the place of repetition of theories traditional for centuries. In 1597 he issued a slender volume of "Essays," which he described as "certain brief notes set than curiously." Later editions, each down rather significantly time with considerable additions, appeared in 1612 and in 1625. The ten essays of the first edition are written in simple and concise style, and are applications of common sense to everyday problems. The volume of 1612, with twenty-nine additions, is on loftier subjects, such as Goodness, Beauty, Empire, Death, the Greatness of Kingdoms. These essays abound in evidences of his study of "the architecture of fortune," a philosophy of success. The essays of the third edition, written after his fall, are more philosophical and contain his ripest wisdom. The shrewdness, the concrete dealing with human nature, the concise and aphoristic style, the concentrated wisdom of one of the keenest observers, have combined to make these fifty-eight essays one of the great achievements of English literature. Bacon's rise to power was very slow. Essex had been long interested in him, but was unable to get his protégé any high position. As a member of the counsel for the Queen he was a participant in the trial of Essex in 1601, a fact for which he has been much criticized. In 1605 his "Advancement of Learning" appeared. In this he carried out in detail some of the youthful ambitions expressed in his letter to Burghley and anticipated most of the philosophy afterward developed in many writings. The book is a survey of learning in his time, filled with acute criticisms of the university course, estimating the accomplishment in all fields of learning, pointing out what needed to be done and the method to be used, and treating the philosophy of success as well as traditional matters. It shows great learning, tremendous vitality, and contains many ideas on the method of research and the function of the college course that are of value today. His praise of learning, found in many passages, is eloquent, marked by lofty imagination and by the passion of a lover. His object was not merely to reach the attention of professional students, but to touch the imagination of men of all sorts and conditions, so that they might look upon research as one of the loftiest of human interests. Not until his forty-sixth year did fortune smile on him. In 1607 he became Solicitor-General. Ten years later he was Lord Keeper; in 1618 Lord Chancellor; in 1621 Viscount St. Albans. He worked with enormous energy. His worldly success and the tremendous official burdens that accompanied it did not put an end to his activities in behalf of learning. In 1620 his "Novum Organum," or new method, appeared, having been prepared for by numerous writings carried on through busy years. His desire was to lead men to use an inductive method in research. He pointed out the way through which modern science has won its triumphs. At the very pinnacle of his fame, he became the victim of the rising moral sense of the time and of the popular dislike of the corruption of the court. He was accused of accepting bribes, was tried and convicted, and Parliament imposed on him a sentence of imprisonment, a fine of £40,000, and expulsion from all public office. There is no evidence that his judgments had been influenced by the gifts that were a convention of the time. He recognized the justice of his sentence, but maintained that he had been uncorrupted. He was fond of extravagance and display, and these qualities together with his long study of the art of rising seem to have blunted his moral sense. They also inspired envy, and it should be added that the increasing unpopularity of the King and of his favorite, Buckingham, hastened the crisis. After his fall, Bacon turned once more to his studies. ies. His "History of Henry VII." (1622) was a pioneer in modern philosophical history. Several scientific works were completed; he revised and expanded his "Essays"; and carried on a series of scientific researches. He died April 9, 1626. The enigma of his character; the tragedy of his fall, almost in a day, from the highest worldly fame to disgrace; the enormous energy of his mind and will; his mastery of English prose; the immense stimulus he gave to learning, and is still capable of givingall these indicate the extraordinary achievement of one of the greatest men of a great period in human history.
Bacon ROGER, an English monk
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ROGER, an English monk, and one of the most profound and original thinkers of his day, was born about 1214, near Ilchester, Somersetshire. He studied at Oxford and Paris. About 1250 he entered the order of Franciscans, but incurring the distrust of his ecclesiastical superiors was sent to Paris and there confined for 10 years without books or writing materials. He was thus punished because of extraordinary discoveries in science which ignorant minds attributed to magic. This opinion was countenanced by the jealousy and hatred of the monks of his fraternity. Having been set at liberty he enjoyed a brief space of quiet while Clement IV. was Pope; but in 1278 he was again thrown into prison, where he remained for at least 10 years. Of the close of his life little is known. His most important work is his "Opus Majus," where he discusses the relation of philosophy to religion, and then treats of language, metaphysics, optics, and experimental science. He was undoubtedly the earliest philosophical experimentalist in Britain; he made signal advances in optics; was an excellent chemist, and intimately acquainted with geography and astronomy, as appears by his discovery of the errors of the calendar and their causes. He died in Oxford, in 1294.
Bacon ROBERT, an American financier and public official
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ROBERT, an American financier and public official, born in Boston in 1860. He graduated from Harvard University in 1880 and entered the banking house of Lee, Higginson & Co. in Boston in 1881. In 1894 he became a member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., New York, remaining until 1903. From 1905 to 1909 he was Assistant ships. The inter-colonial duties were Secretary of State and for three months in the latter year was Secretary of State, succeeding Elihu Root. He was ambassador to France from 1909 to 1912. During the World War was a major in the United States Reserves and served with the staff of General Pershing. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1916. He died in 1919.
Bacon LEONARD, an American clergyman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LEONARD, an American clergyman, born in Detroit, Mich., Feb. 19, 1802; educated at Yale and Andover. In 1825 he became pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven. He was Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale (1866-1871). He was an active opponent of slavery. In 1847 he joined with Drs. Storrs and Thompson to found the New York "Independent." ." He published "Views and Reviews" (1840); "Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays" (1846), and "Genesis of the New England Churches." He died in New Haven, Conn., Dec. 24, 1881.
Bacon a word applied to the sides of a pig
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a word applied to the sides of a pig which have been cured or preserved by salting with salt and saltpeter and afterward drying with or without wood smoke. The nitr nitrogenous, or flesh forming, matter in bacon is small, one pound of bacon yielding less than one ounce of dry, muscular substance, while the amount of carbon compounds, or heat givers, is large, exceeding 60 per cent.
Bacon JOSEPHINE DODGE DAS- KAM, American authoress
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOSEPHINE DODGE DAS- KAM, American authoress, born in Stamford, Conn., Feb. 17, 1876. She graduated from Smith College in 1898 at the head of her class. She has been a prolific writer of books and magazine articles, and is especially happy in her studies of juvenile and adolescent types.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts of Bacon's life as Collier's gave them in 1921 — Gray's Inn, the 1621 conviction for taking gifts, the death in 1626 — still stand, and the Oxford Francis Bacon edition, in progress since 1996, has mostly confirmed rather than upset the record. What has moved is the estimate of his method: where Collier's says he "pointed out the way through which modern science has won its triumphs," twentieth-century philosophers of science argued that simple induction of the kind the "Novum Organum" recommends cannot by itself yield scientific laws, and historians now credit Bacon less for the method than for the institutional vision of organized collaborative research that helped inspire the Royal Society in 1660. Since 1980 his language about mastering and dissecting nature has also drawn sharp criticism, notably from feminist historians of science, a reading nobody in 1921 would have expected. One enthusiasm of Collier's own era has quietly died: the Baconian theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, widely argued in the decades before 1921, has no standing among scholars today.
Written for this edition, 2026.