Francis Bacon
“”knowledge is power
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| —Thomas Hobbes[1] |
Francis Bacon (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) is considered one of the founders of the scientific method in western society.[2] Much of his fame as a scientist could be attributed to the circumstances of his death. In 1626, he proposed the idea of preserving meat through the use of cold and caught pneumonia, supposedly during numerous experiments to test the idea in the cold winter streets of London, including eating a chicken stuffed with snow.
[edit] Shakespeare's plays
Another amusing theory also credits him with writing most of Shakespeare's plays, though this is largely considered to be complete and utter bunk.[wp] Nevertheless, Bacon was an author of some awful sonnets and it is speculated that he wrote some under the pseudonym William Shakespeare to cash in on the reputation the Bard was enjoying with Elizabeth I as his patron. This theory is regarded to be rather more likely though all conspiracy theories surrounding Bacon and Shakespeare are more or less in the same league as those around Mozart and Salieri: pure speculation.
[edit] How many teeth hath a horse?
One of Bacon's more famous diatribes, at least according to legend, dealt with the way contemporary philosophers were more enamored of deductive discussion than they were of observation and experiment.
The gist of this story dealt with the unwillingness of the Learned to actually go out and count the number of teeth a horse had, preferring instead to argue about it and quote books on the subject. The full text is here.
... or maybe Roger Bacon wrote it a few centuries earlier. Both Bacons were men of science, and both doubtlessly tasted just as good on a cheeseburger.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ "Scientia potentia est" in Leviathan (1651), written by Francis Bacon's former secretary
- ↑ A few centuries previously, these procedures were being laid down in Islamic society (especially by Ibn al-Haytham), but they were largely ignored once the Middle East started going batshit insane.