Francis Bacon

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Sir Francis Bacon
Sir Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC (22 January 15619 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, freemason and essayist. He was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Albans in 1621. Both peerage titles became extinct when he died.

He began his professional life as a lawyer, but he has become best known as a philosophical advocate and defender of the scientific revolution. His works establish and popularize an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry. Often, they are called the Baconian method. Induction implies drawing knowledge from the natural world through experimentation, observation, and testing of hypotheses. In the context of his time, such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy.