Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; 1. Dialectic and method in the sixteenth century; 2. An English dialectical controversy; 3. Bacon's response to the dialectical tradition; 4. Bacon's theory of knowledge; 5. The goal of the interpretation of nature; 6. The interpretation of nature; 7. Analogy and generalisation in natural philosophy; 8. analogy and generalisation in ethics and civics; 9. Methods of communication; 10. parable; 11. Exempla; 12. Bacon's view of rhetoric; 13. The method of Bacon's essays; Appendix, Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

This is a substantial and valuable study of the intellectual Renaissance background from which Bacon emerged and against which he reacted.