Lyceum & Book Club - Week 19 - Francis Bacon
- Apr 6, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 8, 2022
The Scientific Revolution
Science and philosophy had long separated into two totally different spheres of academics since ancient Greece, but it is at this point in history when so much was happening and changing during the 1500s and 1600s, when both branches made the break into the modern era - a new way of thinking about how we think and form conclusions about our world and our place in it / a new way of going through a process of finding factual conclusions about our world.
(Galileo lived in this same time period and we will cover him more extensively in later sessions.)
For now we want to explore how philosophy changed in its approach to thinking about knowledge and truths into what is considered the modern era
Francis Bacon - 1561 - 1626
BBC - History - Francis Bacon
Who is Francis Bacon? - 60 second philosophy - 1:26min
Francis Bacon: Introduction to the Philosophy of Induction - Then and Now - 15:39 min
Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning (Bacon vs Aristotle - Scientific Revolution) - Tom Richey - 8:46 min
The Scientific Method/ The Baconian Method
The Philosophy Of Sir Francis Bacon - 5.35 min - Let’s Talk Philosophy
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Book to Read:
Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein - published 1961
- 379 pgs - 3 weeks to read
From wiki:
It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.
The title "Stranger in a Strange Land" is a direct quotation from the King James Bible (taken from Exodus 2:22). The working title for the book was "A Martian Named Smith", which was also the name of the screenplay started by a character at the end of the novel.
In 2012, the Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America".
Reception
Heinlein's deliberately provocative book generated considerable controversy. The free love and commune living aspects of the Church of All Worlds led to the book's exclusion from school reading lists. After it was rumored to be associated with Charles Manson, it was removed from school libraries as well.
Writing in The New York Times, Orville Prescott received the novel caustically, describing it as a "disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism"; he characterized Stranger in a Strange Land as "puerile and ludicrous", saying "when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers". Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale rated the novel 3.5 stars out of five, saying "the book's shortcomings lie not so much in its emancipation as in the fact that Heinlein has bitten off too large a chewing portion".
Despite such reviews, Stranger in a Strange Land won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel and became the first science fiction novel to enter The New York Times Book Review's best-seller list. In 2012, it was included in a Library of Congress exhibition of "Books That Shaped America".
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