BETWEEN RENAISSANCE AND MODERNITY: BACON’S ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
Robert Arnăutu
Cele două cărţi ale lui Francis Bacon despre excelenţa şi progresul cunoaşterii divine şi umane, traducere, note şi comentarii Dana Jalobeanu şi Grigore Vida, studiu introductiv de Dana Jalobeanu (Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas, colecţia „Paradigme“, 2012) ISBN 978-973-50-3744-4, pp.502
The Two Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, published for the first time in 1605, is one of the first works belonging to what is known as modern philosophy. It is the first important work of philosophy of Francis Bacon, written in the form of a letter to King James of England and Scotland and expanded in a Latin edition in 1623, De augmentis scientiarum. About this book one can affirm what Bacon said about the technical inventions of his time: it has “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world” . Thus, this first Romanian edition of the Advancement of Learning, artfully and accurately translated by Dana Jalobeanu and Grigore Vida, is truly praiseworthy, by facilitating and revealing to the Romanian reader some of the major transformations of modern thought entailed in Bacon’s philosophy.
Through his writings Bacon wants to establish a “New Philosophy” that would recreate, through a systematic investigation of the natural world, the prelapsarian dominion of man over nature. The success of his grandiose plan is evident from the fact that he is considered one of the fathers of modern science, the initiator of the experimental inductive method (often called the Baconian method), and the creator of empiricism. The Advancement of Learning is a first step out of a six stage project, the Instauratio magna, designed to create a completely new philosophy.