page_title: Works by Francis Bacon
section_title: Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature
hierarchical_section_title: Works by Francis Bacon / Scientific works / Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature
caption_attribution_description: English: Frontispiece to Sylva sylvarum, or, a naturall history in ten centuries, 1626, by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). STC 1168, Houghton Library, Harvard University
context_page_description: Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author, and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
  Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the Scientific Method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
context_section_description: In this work of 1603, an argument for the progress of knowledge, Bacon considers the moral, religious and philosophical implications and requirements for the advancement of learning and the development of science. Although not as well known as other works such as Novum Organum and Advancement of Learning, this work's importance in Bacon's thought resides in the fact that it was the first of his scientific writings.
  He opens the book, in the proem, stating his belief that the man who succeeds in "kindling a light in nature", would be "the benefactor indeed of the human race, the propagator of man's empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror and subduer of necessities", and at the same time identifying himself as that man, saying he believed he "had been born for the service of mankind", and that in considering in what way mankind might best be served, he had found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life.
  In the first chapter, "Of the Limits and End of Knowledge", he outlines what he believed to be the limits and true ends of pursuing knowledge through sciences, in a similar way as he would later do in his book The Great Instauration. He disavows both the knowledge and the power that is not dedicated to goodness or love, and as such, that all the power achieved by man through science must be subject to " that use for which God hath granted it; which is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man; for otherwise, all manner of knowledge becometh malign and serpentine; ...as the Scripture saith excellently, knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up".
  (See "Of the Limits and End of Knowledge" in Wikisource.)
  Further on, he also takes into consideration what were the present conditions in society and government that were preventing the advancement of knowledge.
  In this book, Bacon considers the increase of knowledge in sciences not only as "a plant of God's own planting", but also as the fulfilling of a prophecy made by Daniel in the Old Testament:
   ...all knowledge appeareth to be a plant of God's own planting, so it may seem the spreading and flourishing or at least the bearing and fructifying of this plant, by a providence of God, nay not only by a general providence but by a special prophecy, was appointed to this autumn of the world: for to my understanding it is not violent to the letter, and safe now after the event, so to interpret that place in the prophecy of Daniel where speaking of the latter times it is said, 'many shall pass to and fro, and science shall be increased' [Daniel 12:4]; as if the opening of the world by navigation and commerce and the further discovery of knowledge should meet in one time or age.
  This quote from the Book of Daniel appears also in the title page of Bacon's Instauratio Magna and Novum Organum, in Latin: "Multi pertransibunt & augebitur scientia".
caption: Frontispiece of Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon's work on Natural History. In the top, a Sun with the name of God written in Hebraic characters within, surrounded by angels, sending light rays to the Earth
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