Labrats Update by Shawn Carlson: Lesson Nine


Francis Bacon (not to be confused with Roger Bacon, the Catholic monk whom we met in Lesson Four), was a brilliant and somewhat notorious courtier to Queen Elizabeth and King James way back in the early part of the 17th Century. A shrewd and possibly corrupt politician, he was nevertheless without question one of the most important figures in the history of science.

Bacon was a utopian , that is, someone who believed that enlightened people could come together to build a perfect world here on earth. However, unlike other philosophers of his age (and ours) Bacon freely admitted that he had no idea how to actually build that perfect world. Rather, he argued back in 1620 that no one knew how. The only way to find out, he said, was for men and women to study nature very carefully to learn everything they could about how the Universe really worked.

To help people make those discoveries Bacon invented much of what we today call the Scientific Method. Just think about how different today's world is from the one that Francis Bacon knew four hundred years ago. Think of everything that you and your family and all of your friends now enjoy because someone during the last four centuries worked very hard to figure out how nature worked. Look around. Science affects just about everything, doesn't it?

In fact, I challenge you to find one thing, just one single physical thing, that you use in your daily life that is completely untouched by science. Think about it, and if you can come up with anything, please share it with me at DrShawn@sas.org . I've got to tell ya, I've been kicking this little problem around for over twenty years now and I'm still stumped.

So, was Sir Francis right? Is knowledge really power?

Find out more by reading Lesson Nine at http://www.scifair.org/Labrats/LessonNine/LessonNine283.html

See you there.

Dr. Shawn