“Forward not back” was Labour’s slogan at the last election, and how we sophisticates sniggered! But the concept of progress—that history might have direction, that things might get better or knowledge advance—is a surprisingly recent one. It was formulated exactly 400 years ago, in 1605, when Francis Bacon wrote The Advancement of Learning.
Bacon was a lawyer and politician. He was born in London in 1561 to a prosperous family, his father being lord keeper of the great seal. Following the custom of the day, Francis was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 12, but he left after two years, dismissing Trinity as a ghastly college of Aristotelian pedants mired in the three “distempers of learning”—”vain imaginations,” “vain altercations” and “vain affectations.” “Why,” Bacon asked in The Advancement of Learning, “should a few received authors stand up like Hercules columns, beyond which there should be no sailing or discovering?”
For some years Bacon left his own question unanswered because he had a career to pursue. Following his father into the law and politics, he was soon a barrister and an MP, and then successively solicitor general, attorney general, lord keeper of the great seal himself and lord chancellor. A worldly, ambitious, greedy man who collected a knighthood, barony, viscountcy and many bribes, Bacon’s lodestar was power and he amassed as much as he could. But it was his interest in power that was to direct his philosophy, because the formative event of his intellectual life was not Trinity but the Spanish armada.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
