Biography Essay

"I have taken all knowledge to be my province," wrote Francis Bacon in 1592 to his uncle, Lord Burghley, the lord high treasurer. Bacon was just over thirty, but already he had begun the writing of his grand program for the renewal of human learning. It was to be nothing less than the reform of human epistemology itself—a reshaping of human perception through reforming its methods of perceiving, including the restoration of language and linguistic forms. The goal was vast. Its climactic text, Bacon's Novum Organum (New Instrument, 1620), revealed the dimensions of this task on its illustrated title page. Bacon's ship, with full-blown sails, is crossing the formerly forbidden strait between two huge pillars. The illustration represents what became one of Bacon's recurring commonplaces: his substitution of "plus ultra" (more beyond) for "ne plus ultra" (no more beyond), the motto that the Holy Roman Emperor...