Francis Bacon and Ingenuity^*

Abstract

This essay discusses the Latin termingeniumwithin the writings of Francis Bacon (1561–1626). It proposes that althoughingeniumdoes not easily translate into English, Bacon uses the term in a clearly defined range of senses. For the most part, he echoes the discourse of ingenuity and inventiveness common to many sixteenth-century humanists, but differs from them in sharply delimiting the scope and status of ingenious thinking. In particular, he excludes ingenuity from the logical portion of his reformed art of discovery: as the goal of this was demonstrative knowledge, Bacon (like the Aristotelian logicians he aimed to supplant) believed that it had to be the province of the intellect, not ofingenium. A fuller understanding of the ways in which Bacon usesingeniumcasts his methodological thought into illuminating new relief, and draws attention to the manner in which Bacon’s ideas were appropriated, criticized, and misunderstood in the half century after his death — not least by the self-styled Baconians in and around the early Royal Society.

A Study on the Factors Affecting Reading and Reading Habits of Preschool Children

“…Bacon said "Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." (Lewis, 2014). Reading is the field of learning that makes the greatest contribution to mind development.…”

The Prehistory of Serendipity, from Bacon to Walpole

“…To this end, Susan E. Alcock, in the leading essay of the 2010 Darwin Lectures on that topic, asks if there might be "a prehistory to the, as yet uncoined, term," whether it might not be that serendipity "exist[ed] before its formal eighteenth-century gives ten examples of chance intervening in an investigation-with nineteen more in an appendix-before hazarding, in place of a definition, a maxim: "look out for the unexpected" (pp. [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. 11 christening."…”

“…54 As argued by a string of scholars from Paolo Rossi and Marta Cavazza to William Eamon and Rhodri Lewis, the venatorial metaphor is constitutive of Bacon's thought. 55 All things in nature, writes Bacon, "every natural action, every motion and process of nature, is nothing else than a hunt"; "the sciences and arts hunt after their works," he insists, but so too do "human counsels hunt after their ends," just as "all things in nature hunt after their food." 56 And while the metaphor is ultimately an inherited one, borrowed from Cicero among others, Bacon leans on it in ways new enough that at least one of his usages, the verb "hounding," appears to be his own coinage.…”