Francis Bacon — "To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child."
To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.
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More from Francis Bacon
"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it."
"The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship."
"All colors will agree in the dark."
"A great kingdom is not to be made good by the multitude of people, but by the greatness of them that are in it."
"The Idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words, …"
About Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
English philosopher whose Novum Organum (1620) laid out the inductive method that became the foundation of modern empirical science. Closely associated with Galileo Galilei (contemporary scientific revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Aristotelian scholasticism, the syllogistic, deductive philosophical tradition that ruled medieval universities — Bacon's Novum Organum literally means 'new instrument' — the explicit replacement for Aristotle's Organon. The entire scientific revolution turned on which logic was correct: deduction from authority or induction from observation.
The standard scholarly entry points to Francis Bacon's work: Lisa Jardine (Queen Mary University of London, Renaissance scholar) — Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (1974); Jonathan Marwil (Michigan, intellectual historian) — The Trials of Counsel: Francis Bacon in 1621 (1976); Perez Zagorin (Rochester, historian of ideas) — Francis Bacon (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Francis Bacon.