According to some, Francis Bacon accomplished nothing less than a scientific revolution. Some even say he was the founder of modern science itself. Born into a world where natural magic, astrology, alchemy, and the wisdom of the Ancients were all accepted as authentic sciences, he left behind a body of work expressing a new and strange idea. In this radical vision, humanity was destined to free itself from its mundane misery by investigating nature and discovering its laws. It was a vision of collective action and incremental progress that sustains scientific practice to this day. Yet Bacon was also a deeply paradoxical figure. A lover of humanity and believer in progress, he was also a Machiavellian statesman committed to advancing the interests of the English state, as well as a self-seeking loner who married for money and disinherited his wife. 

Richard Serjeantson, Cambridge’s foremost authority on Bacon’s life and legacy, tells us the intellectually exhilarating story of the man who ushered in our modern age of science.

This episode is hosted by Sam Tchorek-Bentall